Kolkata-based filmmaker’s short film wins grant at the KASHISH film festival

The short film Mehroon has bagged two laurels at the KASHISH International Film Festival in Mumbai. Director Abu Sohel Khondekar (she/they), a transwoman and a queer filmmaker, won the KASHISH QDrishti Film Grant 2023 to make the film.

Kolkata

The short film Mehroon has bagged two laurels at the KASHISH International Film Festival in Mumbai. Director Abu Sohel Khondekar (she/they), a transwoman and a queer filmmaker, won the KASHISH QDrishti Film Grant 2023 to make the film. After the screening of the film on May 19, 2024, at Liberty Cinema, Mumbai, she also won the Special Jury Mention for Riyad Wadia Award for Best Emerging Indian Filmmaker. 

KASHISH is the biggest queer film festival in South Asia which saw hundreds of queer directors, film industry workers, and actors join in from across the globe to screen and celebrate the stories from and of the community. Among them, Kolkata-based 34-year-old Khondekar managed to get the ₹2.5 lakh grant for her first short film. 

According to Khondekar, the thought to title the film Mehroon came from Mehroon Nissa, the wife of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, oft described as the real force running his empire. The titular character in the movie chooses the name Mehroon, as a symbolic break from Brahminical conservatism to reshape herself in a completely new identity. 

The film is about Mehroon, identified as Anirban Mandal at birth and her tough relationship with her father. Her father’s dying will stipulates a share in his properties only if Mehroon presents herself as his “son” and returns to the name assigned to her at birth. Her journey is traced through the silent yet impactful frames of the movie. 

Khondekar said, “The story of the film was born out of the necessity to create something with the bare minimum. I believe we as the trans community can’t wait for the larger Indian mass to accept us and then come out.”

She also mentioned that a platform like KASHISH has helped many filmmakers like herself from various countries to come together and find a space to “accept ourselves first for the world to accept us”.