International Premiere
Shishir Jha enters the scene with this richly layered cultural snapshot, thoughtfully excerpting an intimate tragedy to contextualize the wider environmental disaster enveloping the Santhal tribe, an ethnic group native to India and Bangladesh, whose lives are at risk by their proximity to uranium mining.
Centering on the story of a young couple trying to come to terms with the loss of their daughter, Tortoise Under the Earth captures a heartbreaking sense of yearning, gradually expanding on the narrative scope to include regional specificities. Jha adopts a hybrid docu-fiction format to accentuate the layers of subtext at play, weaving ethnological and anthropological elements, and elegantly casting a macro lens over a heartfelt micro storyline. The gentle, observational gaze results in mesmerizing imagery, glimpsing tribal traditions and folklore, and a spiritually rich way of life in harmony with nature. Jha impresses with fresh, intuitive filmmaking, drawing from an immersive process that results in a sense of immediacy and powerful humanist messaging.
Presented by
Jagarnath Baskey, Mugli Baskey
India
2022
In Santhali with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Short Forum 2: Anthropomaxx
Dogs, frogs, hogs, and more!
The Liberation
Haunted by her past, Rita (a magnificent Carrie Coon) is lured to an all-female commune by a magnetic, manipulative spiritual leader (Lily James). An unsettling yet deeply empathetic exploration of personal freedom, devotion, and control.
Image: © Bleecker Street
Tender Loving Care
Mike Leigh’s film depicts the lives of Amy and Rosie, best friends and fellow social workers, who care for the dispossessed with all the strength they have. Sometimes it's funny, tragic, and often it's balancing both, this is a work of humble compassion.
The Story of Documentary Film – The 2010s & 2020s
In The Story of Documentary Film – The 2010s & 2020s, Mark Cousins follows nonfiction into phones, GoPros, YouTube, TikTok, live streams, and feeds to look at bodily autonomy, surveillance, racism, borders, and truth after vérité.
Image: © Fire of Love, 2022, dir. Sara Dosa, Canada, USA, Sandbox Films, Cottage M, Intuitive Pictures, National Geographic Documentary Films
A Girl Unknown
In this tender, compassionate drama, we see the hardships endured by a young girl adopted in the early 1980s during China’s one-child policy. As a teenager in the 90s, she’s still fighting to find a sense of belonging and assert her worth.
Concrete Land
Filmed over eight years, Concrete Land follows the Najar family, one of Jordan’s last Afro-Palestinian-Bedouin families, as luxury villas close in on their grazing space outside Amman. Asmahan Bkerat preserves their way of life in the face of erasure.
Credits
Producer
Vinay Mishra, Pallavi Rohatgi, Preety Ali, Raghavan Bharadwaj, Shishir Jha, Mritunjay Jha
Screenwriter
Shishir Jha
Cinematography
Shishir Jha
Editor
Shishir Jha
Original Music
Durga Prasad Murmu
Director
Shishir Jha
Shishir Jha is a Mumbai-based filmmaker born in 1988 in Bihar, India. He graduated from the National Institute of Design with a Bachelor’s degree in Film and Video Communication Design. He then did a Master’s in Film Direction at the Sarajevo Film Academy, and has received a Filmmaking diploma from the late Abbas Kiarostami’s workshop at Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) in Cuba. He is one of the directors of Shuruaat Ka Interval (2014), an anthology film released by PVR Director’s Rare.