Acclaimed Australian documentary filmmaker David Bradbury was detained at Chennai Airport upon his arrival in India with his children, Nakeita (21) and Omar (14). The 73-year-old filmmaker, a two-time Oscar nominee, had planned a two-week trip to India following the death of his wife, Treena Lenthall, five months earlier. The family intended to visit Varanasi, where David Bradbury hoped to show his children, especially his younger son, how Hindus "deal with death and say farewell to their loved ones in the next life."
However, upon arrival, David Bradbury was stopped by immigration authorities and detained for 24 hours before being deported to Thailand, where the family had traveled from. His children were allowed to continue their journey in India, but David Bradbury was forced to leave the country without an explanation for his detention. During the ordeal, he was held in a small, unsanitary room and denied access to his medication and toilet facilities.
David Bradbury described the conditions in an interview to The Wire, saying he was kept in a “pretty disgusting room with papers and rubbish on the floor under a bed with a filthy mattress and no sheets.” He was even forced to relieve himself in a paper cup after his requests for a toilet were ignored.
David Bradbury believes his detention was connected to his earlier work in India. In 2012, he had visited the coastal village of Idinthakarai in Tamil Nadu, where he documented protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. The plant had sparked widespread concern among the local fishing community, who feared the long-term impacts of a nuclear disaster, especially in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima incident in Japan.
David Bradbury had filmed the villagers’ daily lives and protests, capturing their deep fears about the plant’s potential dangers. “If one of those reactors has a meltdown like Fukushima or Chernobyl… the consequences and triggering of cancer from the radiation leakage would prove catastrophic,” David Bradbury said.
During his 2012 visit, David Bradbury had faced difficulties, including harassment and detention while attempting to visit the Kudankulam site. He later wrote an article titled Documenting Dissent: David Bradbury’s Account of Harassment in Koodankulam, sharing his experiences and criticizing the Indian government’s decision to build nuclear reactors on what he considered a dangerous fault line. He called the decision “irresponsible towards their own people but also to the world."
Despite the ordeal, David Bradbury insisted that his children continue with their trip in India. His daughter, Nakeita, said, “It was just very sad and unfair. The Indian authorities had issued my father a visa after all… There was no reason to trouble him and us this way.”
The family remained in contact throughout, and David Bradbury expressed pride in how his children handled the situation, even though he regretted not being able to travel with them.
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