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
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
A career thief’s circumstances grow desperate when he fences valuable merchandise stolen from a vengeful crime family. John Turturro is exquisite as a wiseacre who is typically one step ahead of everyone but now finds himself behind the eight ball.
Gabin
Filmed over 10 years, Gabin follows Gabin Jourdel from age 8 to 18 and the animals, schoolwork, chores, and imagined futures that define his youth. As he grows, his adolescence becomes a question of inheritance and choosing one’s own future.
Iron Boy
Iron Boy, a hand-painted animated feature, follows a hardworking preteen farm boy and his sublime flights of fancy as he faces the earthshaking upheavals of growing up in an iron back brace. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes 2026.
Image: © Eddy Cinema, Beside Productions, Regular Production, France 3 Cinema, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, RTBF
The Story of Documentary Film – The 2000s
The Story of Documentary Film – The 2000s enters a decade shaped by 9/11, war, fear, and politics. Through films such as The Cove and Grizzly Man, these chapters trace the documentary medium's encounter with modernity as it begins to unravel.
Image: © Iraq in Fragments, 2006, dir. James Longley, USA, Daylight Factory Typecast-Pictures
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.
