Hun­dreds of thou­sands of Indian farm­ers flee out of eco­nom­ic des­per­a­tion into sui­cide. They leave behind their wives with a moun­tain of debt, social exclu­sion and con­demned to slav­ish labor. For his first fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary film, direc­tor Kin­shuk Surjan has ini­ti­at­ed a sup­port group for such widows. San­ji­vani, wid­owed for 7 years with two chil­dren, becomes his main pro­tag­o­nist. She con­ceals her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the group in front of her broth­er-in-law’s family where she lives, and who are strug­gling with poor har­vests and falling prices them­selves. The young mother is deter­mined to become self-suf­fi­cient through fur­ther edu­ca­tion and work.

The film cap­tures San­ji’s every­day life with almost fea­ture film-like inten­si­ty. The camera makes her face speak, cap­tures beau­ti­ful­ly her close­ness to her chil­dren. Clev­er­ly chosen obser­va­tions local­ize her role in her broth­er-in-law’s family. How­ev­er, her fate is most impres­sive­ly reflect­ed in that of the other widows, whom the viewer expe­ri­ences through her eyes in their despair - only rarely in hope­ful moments. A scare­crow in the dry fields becomes fig­u­ra­tive­ly a ghost of the deceased.

Kin­shuk Surjan is an Indian film­mak­er, based in Brus­sels and Bhopal. He stud­ied doc­u­men­tary film at the mobile film school Doc­No­mads. His short film POLA (2013) won the Indian Nation­al Stu­dent Film Award for Best Film and Best Script in 2013. He went on as a 2nd assis­tant direc­tor on the fic­tion film ISLAND CITY (2015), award­ed at Venice Film fes­ti­val. He con­tin­ued stud­ies at the Royal Insti­tute for The­atre, Cinema & Sound, Brus­sels and made the exper­i­men­tal short DIVIDED LINES (2015). His grad­u­a­tion film THE FLANDRIEN (2017) depicts a boy in Flan­ders, who was pushed into a cycling career by his par­ents, won the Flan­ders Audio­vi­su­al Fund’s “Wild­card” and was later broad­cast­ed. His project MARCHING IN THE DARK par­tic­i­pat­ed in Berli­nale Tal­ents 2021 and received the Human Wrights Awards-Spe­cial Men­tion at CPH:Dox 2024.