Shadow Lines

"Shadow Lines" is a meditation on borders and citizenship through the lives of Bengali Muslims origin stripped of their citizenship in India, Assam.

Synopsis:

The film “Shadow Lines” is about Stateless people in Assam, India. They are people who do not belong to any nation and have no rights. They are called "bidexi", "illegal immigrants" or “Bangladeshis”. The exist in a state of liminality as they do not belong to any nation. The film “Shadow Lines” will explore this issue by delving into the lives of Sufia Khatun, Shahjahan Ali Ahmed and Morjina Begum – people who are paying the price of a history that they did not create! The plot of the film will be centred around Morjina Begum trying to rebuild her life after her time in the detention camp, Sufia Khatun fighting her case in the courts, and Shahjahan Ali Ahmed trying to get his name on the NRC list. Will they be able to achieve what they want? These are some of the plot points that the film “Shadow Lines” delve into, and through this it hopes to raise universal questions around border, nation and citizenship.

Director’s Statement

I have been working in the state of Assam for 10 years. This has resulted in two films "What the Fields Remember", 2015 (on the Nellie massacre in which more than 2,000 Bengali speaking Muslims in the town of Nellie and 13 other villages were massacred on 18th February, 1983), Sikhirini Mwasanai, 2019 (Dance of the Butterfly), on a young adult Bodo (an indigenous community) group trying to revive live dance and song performance tradition that had disappeared due to decades of conflict in the region and "Facing History and Ourselves, a research project (forthcoming, August 2023). Despite the international attention on this issue, there is no artistic work that has emerged on the issue that goes into the interiority of the lives of the people who have been pronounced “foreigners”. The film “Shadow Lines” is my commitment to bring to light some of the gross injustices taking place in Assam in a cinematic language.