Five nations, five films on justice, conflict

A film festival that targets the faulty justice system in India and neighbouring countries is being screened at the CD Deshmukh Hall, India International Centre from May 25 to 30, 6.30 pm onwards.

‘The launch of Justice Project Films’, as it is named, has brought lesser known films from Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. ‘Five countries, five films, on justice and conflict’ is the punchline given by Aakar, the organiser of the movie marathon.

Kesang Tseten’s film, Castaway Man was screened on May 25, where post screening the director was bombarded with questions by the assembled gathering . “For most Nepalis caste identity is among the foremost denoters of who a person is. It is among the first things asked of a person, which is easily given away by one’s name. My interest in Dor Bahadur Bista is that. For one, he is an intriguing figure. A Nepali anthropologist for a society much of whose early self-knowledge comes from Western anthropology, and also for the compelling ideas Bista advanced.

He argued that the dominance of the Brahmanical caste ideology diminished the relatively egalitarian cultural values of the numerous ethnic communities of Nepal, and the values of ‘hierarchy and fatalism’, Tseten tells Metrolife. “The man disappeared long ago. This meant grasping the essence of Bista’s ideas, which meant framing his thesis in a simpler way: that the central issue of Nepali society is caste hierarchy and its entwinement with fatalism, the former a condition of the latter,” Tseten adds.

Prasanna Vithanage’s

Silence In The Courts is his first experiment with the documentary form. Vithanage is one of the finest filmmakers Sri Lanka has produced and his films have been eagerly awaited both by his dedicated Sri Lankan audience and cinephiles from across the globe.

His films have been screened at almost all important film festivals and won several awards. Vithanage’s body of work stands at the intersection of violence, gender and social injustice. His new film is a fast-paced investigation of the case of a judge who gets away with charges of rape by the wives of two men who are being tried in his court for some petty offence. The ‘apparatus’ comes to his defence and the film disentangles this ‘apparatus’ to reveal not only the injustice served to the two women but also the danger posed by a compromised judiciary in a country dealing with a conflict situation.

A Walnut Tree by Ammar Aziz is Pakistan’s entry at the fest. The director will be present for a post-screening discussion on May 29 in the evening.The film is about an old man reminiscing about a distant homeland, he wants to return to. The son and daughter-in-law argue with him. The grand children watch the tension rise. Internally displaced and forced to live in a camp, the family is caught between memories of what life was, insecurity of the present and the bleakness of future. The sadness and tension is unbearable, something is about to happen.

Aziz is an independent documentary filmmaker and the founding director of SAMAAJ (Social Awareness Media and Art Junction) in Lahore. Rahul Roy’s film, scheduled to be screened on May 30, shows the Maruti Suzuki case which saw 147 workers jailed for over two years without bail on charges of murder.