Jio MAMI 2023: Art unshackles marginal identities & boundaries in three debuts at Mumbai Film Festival

Sahela (Companion) by Mumbai-born debutant director Raghuvir Joshi, part of Fous South Asia at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, is about a married couple whose deep bond is tested when the husband comes out as gay.

Nigerian actor Samuel Abiola Robinson first arrived in India six years years ago, bitten by the bug of Bollywood. He got his wish, instead, in a Malayalam movie as an African footballer playing in a seven-a-side league tournament in Malappuram, the mecca of football in Kerala.

Sudani From Nigeria directed by Zakariya Mohammed became a runaway success for its charming tale of brotherhood between Indian and African communities and made Robinson an instant celebrity in India. Success didn't help Robinson thwart racism he encountered in the streets of India's national capital following the film's release. The harrowing experience of facing racial discrimination, however, did bring back scary memories when he was cast in a new film set in Delhi.

Dilli Dark, Delhi-based filmmaker Dibakar Das Roy's first feature on the national capital's notorious dislike for the outsider, has Robinson in the lead as a young African student who wants to get his MBA and land a corporate job in India. Part of South Asia Competition section of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, Dilli Dark along with such debut films as Pushtaini and Sahela make a powerful statement on the society's prejudices towards marginalised identities.

Dilli Dark by Delhi-based filmmaker Dibakar Das Roy, a South Asia Competition entry at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, is a dark comedy on the Indian capital's notorious dislike for the outsider.

“Being an African man who has himself faced some racial discrimination in New Delhi, I was drawn to the story because I feel that it is an authentic take on the subject of racial discrimination but it does not preach to you," says the Lagos-born Robinson who began his acting career as a young boy in television serials in the thriving Nigerian film industry.

Robinson plays Michael Okeke, a Nigerian immigrant in Delhi who does odd jobs to fund his studies. "I had to create an African protagonist who would traverse the different strata of Delhi exposing our innate biases," says Roy about the 100-minute dark comedy in Hindi, English and the widely spoken Yoruba language and Pidgin of Nigeria, he co-produced with his brother Udayan Das Roy.

"The character of Michael Okeke became a metaphor for every person who is made to feel like an outsider in Indian society today," says Roy, who remembers facing bullying for being dark-skinned at his boarding school in north India. "Casual discrimination is all around us in India," he adds.

"From film stars hawking fairness creams to matrimonial ads asking for fair-skinned brides and grooms, the colour of skin is just one of the many ways in which prejudice is expressed in everyday Indian society, apart from religion, caste, ethnicity, sex, class, diet and others," explains Roy. "This normalisation of discrimination is what the film is about, an attempt to hold up a distorted fun-house mirror to a society that perhaps does not understand how deep its biases run or where they even arise from."

Pushtaini (Ancestral) by Mumbai-based actor-director Vinod Rawat, part of Focus South Asia at the Mumbai Film Festival, tells the story of migration that is turning Uttarakhand's rural areas into 'ghost villages'.

Pushtaini (Ancestral) another debut film, by Mumbai-based actor-director Vinod Rawat also tells the story of migration, this time from India's rural lands to its metropolises. Part of Focus South Asia at the Mumbai Film Festival, Pushtaini is set in the ancestral village of the director in Uttarakhand and explores the relationship between a father and son, both returning to their roots after living for long in cities.

Rawat, a Film and Television Institute of India, Pune alumnus who co-directed the International Emmy Awards-nominated series Aarya, puts a struggling actor (played by Rawat) in the central role to peep into the lives of families dealing with the allure of cities in the backdrop of many of the hill state's rural areas turning into 'ghost villages' because of migration.

"The idea originated when I visited my ancestral village in Uttarakhand and saw empty homes due to economic migration. My family too had left the village and moved to a metro city for better opportunities," says Rawat, who co-wrote Pushtaini with Rita Heer, who plays a prominent role in the film.

Australia production Sahela (Companion) by debutant director Raghuvir Joshi, part of Fous South Asia at the Mumbai Film Festival, is about a married couple whose deep bond is tested when the husband comes out as gay. Set in the vibrant Indian community in Western Sydney, the English-Hindi language film executive produced by actor Dev Patel, has been described by its production team as a "relentless pursuit of art, unshackled by boundaries".

Western Sydney suburb couple Vir Oza and Nitya Behl's world comes crashing down when the weight of Indian familial expectations and ingrained gender norms force Oza to disclose his true sexuality to his wife. What follows is a voyage of self-discovery and transformation.

"It's a story that redefines our notions of love, exploring the complexity of sexuality and the freedom that comes from breaking conformity," says the Mumbai-born Joshi, who is co-producing Dev Patel's upcoming directorial debut, Monkey Man. "Being gay and Indian is not a joyride, with all its paradoxes and strange hypocrisies, but the men I’ve met have all had stories to tell – stories that gave me hope and reassurance."