Be it the well-documented Manorama Devi incident in Manipur or the Mukhtaran Mai saga in Pakistan or the little known case of Indian prisoners of war at a camp near Berlin during World War I, a set  of documentary films on strong socio-political issues has left  viewers shaken at the ongoing 9th Osian’s Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema.

Being screened as part of the “In-Tolerance” section in the festival, these films have tried to chronicle the lives of ordinary people affected by events around them, be it in the Subcontinent or in Iraq and Palestine.

One of the most interesting films screened as part of this special package that focuses on the intolerance that stems from diverse reasons and beseeches societies across the world, is German director Philip Scheffner’s “The Halfmoon Files” which literally unearths the story of Indian prisoners of war in his country during World War I. The film by Scheffner “India in Mind” literally revives “the ghosts of the past” – as he describes it – in his latest film as he uses material from phonographic records from archives.