서울국제여성영화제

Expanded Visions: Women Reframing India is a special section that brings together contemporary films by Indian women directors, as well as works by women filmmakers from around the world who reflect on Indian society and culture through a distinctly female perspective. These films move beyond the conventions of mainstream Bollywood to reimagine Indian life and identity with bold aesthetics, political insight, and intimate storytelling. Engaging with diverse genres and cinematic approaches, the program highlights a multiplicity of voices that reshape our understanding of contemporary India. This section features seven feature-length films and a short film project titled A Room of Our Own, comprising thirteen shorts created by women graduates of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). Together, these works offer layered, nuanced, and intersectional portrayals of Indian society and gendered experience.

Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls, which won the Audience Award and Acting Award in the World Cinema Dramatic section at Sundance, sensitively explores the coming-of-age of an 18-year-old girl and her fraught relationship with her emotionally stunted mother. All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia, winner of the Jury Prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, follows three nurses in Mumbai as they navigate issues of marriage, religion, labor, and housing, finding strength through shared intimacy and solidarity. Rima Das’ Village Rockstars 2, which received the Grand Prize at the Dortmund/Cologne International Women's Film Festival, chronicles the journey of a girl in Assam who dreams of becoming a musician while bearing adult responsibilities at home.

In Cinema Pe Cinema, Vani Subramanian documents the vanishing world of India’s single-screen cinemas and the memories they hold, offering a poetic reflection on community, resistance, and cinematic loss. Farming the Revolution by Nishtha Jain and Akash Baumatari immerses viewers in the massive, intergenerational protest movement by Indian farmers opposing recent agricultural reforms, capturing a rare moment of cross-caste and cross-class solidarity. Iram Ghufran’s A Terrible Beauty, filmed in China’s vast wholesale city of Yiwu, blends documentary and speculative fiction to ask what it means to be human in a technologically mediated, posthuman world. Isabel Herguera’s Sultana’s Dream, inspired by Rokeya Hossain’s 1905 feminist sci-fi classic, imagines “Ladyland”—a peaceful society ruled by women—through evocative, handcrafted animation. Finally, A Room of Our Own brings together short films by FTII’s women alumni, using fiction, documentary, essay, and experimental modes to reflect on memory, space, and the gendered experience of working in Indian cinema. These intimate works chart a collective history of women in film, offering a rare view into their evolving role within India’s cinematic landscape.

Through its diverse selection of films and filmmakers, Expanded Visions: Women Reframing India offers a vital and multifaceted portrait of Indian society—reimagined through the expanded lens of women’s cinema.