In filmmaker Tribeny Rai’s Nepali-language debut drama, Shape of Momo, the dumpling becomes a reminder of how the idea of food functions in a patriarchal society. Set amid Sikkim’s lush hills and rocky terrain, the film follows Bishnu, a woman in her 30s who returns home from Delhi only to confront the familiar chorus of advice about marriage, work, and settling down. Her inability to make perfectly shaped momos reminds her of her inadequacy in a society that demands perfection from women. Her relationship with her stoic mother and her married, pregnant sister Juno deepens the film’s exploration of compromise, regret, and female agency. The film also drew the support of prominent filmmakers Rana Daggubati, Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti, and Payal Kapadia, who joined the project as executive producers.
For Rai, the story is deeply personal. She sees traces of both Bishnu and Juno in herself. “Mostly I see a lot of Bishnu in me,” she says. “But when you have to navigate society and its ways, I do act like Juno once in a while.”
The 35-year-old SRFTI alumna says the film emerged from her own attempts to understand identity, belonging, and the expectations imposed on women. What began as a desire to tell stories from her region gradually turned into a process of self-examination. “In the film school, I felt it was my responsibility to tell our story, because otherwise, who else will?”
Rai was initially developing a film about a Nepali woman sub-inspector, a strong-headed protagonist shaped by the challenges she faces in her surroundings. However, Rai’s own experience of returning home from a city and negotiating social expectations felt more urgent. “I had come back from the city and thought myself to be smart for my world, while also trying to understand why things were not working the way I wanted them to,” she recalls. “That is when I thought maybe I need to make a film about this experience.” Over time, the project evolved beyond autobiography. Working with co-writer Kislay helped her gain distance from the material, allowing the film to be critical not only of society but also of its protagonist.
The desire to complicate familiar narratives also informs Rai’s approach to representing Northeast India on screen. “There is a tendency to use our landscape as this beautiful escape inhabited by simpletons,” she says. “Mountain folks are seen as exotic creatures everywhere. I have longed to give dignity to our people, where we want to be seen as complex as people living in Delhi or Bombay.”
Rai is equally hopeful about the future of Nepali-language cinema in India. While Nepal has a well-established film industry, filmmakers from Sikkim, North Bengal, and Shillong are increasingly working to build an ecosystem of their own. “People are used to watching a certain kind of Nepali film,” she says. “So I hope they see that we are trying to create something new. We need an ecosystem where all kinds of films can coexist.” By locating a familiar story of gender, family and belonging within a distinctly Sikkimese context, Rai’s debut expands the geography of Indian independent cinema while insisting on the universality of concerns that it portrays.