Sparsh Ahuja

Birdsong is an intimate portrait of the dying whistled language of the Hmong people in northern Laos

Based on the true story of Ghulam Ali, Rest in Paper is the absurd story of bureaucracy, statelessness and the refugees whose lives it destroyed.

Two men from the Partition generation — Ishar Das Arora, an Indian Hindu who migrated from Pakistan to India, and Iqbal-ud-din Ahmed, a Pakistani Muslim who made the opposite journey — share childhood memories of their experiences while playing a board game. As the two men unpack their memories, audiences embody the experience of a 7-year-old child at key points in the migration. Child of Empire offers a powerful counter-narrative that lends a fresh perspective on the effects of forced migration on everyday individuals.

Over an intimate conversation whilst cooking with her grandmother, eight year-old Nithya learns of the tie between heritage and food and how new borders cut her Chettiar family off from their childhood home.