Prachee Bajania

Umbro, the threshold of a home, is the liminal space that speaks to the lives of women, including the filmmaker's mother and her friends who live in the small town of Dhrangadhra in Gujarat, India. The film explores joyful friendships among women, often dismissed and unsung - carrying in them moments of shared stories, solidarities, conflicts and, most of all, routine acts of resistance.

The sole owner of a small field in tribal Gujarat, Inaas is the target of envious neighbours who brand her a “witch”, and lurk in the shadows of both her land, and her nightmares. Enveloped in fear, she looks for strength in other women – a new mother, a young married woman. As they negotiate different roles and realities that test their resilience, we glimpse the bone-deep weariness that often lies behind daily courage. The Mahua forest bears silent witness to their secret conversations, sometimes reaching out through ancient folk songs.

Here Lies Makhfi is a portrait of the 17th century Indian princess Zeb-un-nissa who wrote Persian poetry under the nom de plume Makhfi (the hidden one). Daughter of the reviled Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, Zeb-un-nissa is an enigmatic figure in Indian history and her poetry is our only window into her life. The film positions Zeb-un-nissa's poetic expression within the contemporary zeitgeist of islamophobia, neglect and selective amnesia in India, tracing her work through three people.