Director: Abhijeet Arun Shanker
Country: India
Language: Bengali | Hindi |English
Year: 2024
Run Time: 26 mins
A documentary crew tries to unearth the truth behind the castle village of Bengal
A group of urbanites visit Dhanyakuria, a village that witnessed history transitioning from the early prehistoric settlement of man to the colonial imperialism of the British and tyrannical administration of the Zamindars. Their journey begins as an ethnographic case-study but soon shifts its course becoming more personal and self-reflexive often manifesting itself through a medium that's trying to inquire into its own artistic possibilities. Themes of collective memory, mass superstition and cultural alienation are explored by the juxtaposition of the 'real' and the 'imagined'.
Director:
Abhijeet Arun Shanker is an emerging independent filmmaker originally from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. His debut short Notes on Dhanyakuria'premiered at Emami Art Experimental Film Festival, 2025. He co-directed Belly of Whale which competed at Kolkata International Film Festival of 2025, while his short fiction Samsara was featured at SiGNS Festival, Kerala in 2026. A graduate of University of Delhi and currently a final year student at Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute of Kolkata, Shanker aspires to tell stories rooted in personal experiences that explore universal truths.
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