Gumnaam Din (Missing Days) by Ekta Mittal has been selected for the Shorts Competition at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival in the German capital.
Commissioned by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT), the film is a rumination on separation, loss, memory and waiting.
Gumnaam Din is about missing people who left for work in faraway cities and about those who wait endlessly for them to return or be found. Guided by Shiv Kumar Batalvi's birha (separation) poetry, the film explores the yearnings of those who are missing and their loved ones who wait for them.
The film observes separation as an inevitable everyday practice as it questions if they are to be found or do they even want to return?
Mittal co-founded Maraa, a media and arts collective in Bangalore, and works as practitioner, researcher, curator and facilitator on issues of gender, labour and caste in rural and urban contexts, making films around labour, migration and cities.
This is the second time in a row that a PSBT film has been selected for the Berlin festival. Prantik Basu’s Rang Mahal went last year to the festival.
Berlinale will be held from 20 February through 1 March this year.