I don’t go to watch films to understand myself. I would go to therapy for that,” says Delhi filmmaker and poet Anureet Watta. “The queer films I saw were about one isolated character suffering—and then suffering more. Just when it begins to ease, the film ends,” they say. “It was just boring.” Their recent short film Don’t Interrupt While We Dance pushes back against this narrow grammar of queer storytelling in cinema.
In response, Don’t Interrupt… centres six queer flatmates over the course of a single evening. Gathered in their apartment to celebrate Noori’s 18th birthday, the happy evening is abruptly interrupted by a police raid. What unfolds reflects systemic violence—and the group’s refusal to submit to it.
The idea took shape in late 2022, when Watta found themselves in a rare pocket of stability: a home they felt safe in, friends they could rely on, and the everyday intimacy of shared routines—“cutting onions and watching Om Shanti Om”. It was a mundanity that allowed them to exist without explanation.
“Cinema is a time-based medium—if the entire film is spent explaining to a larger audience why we are okay, when do we get to just watch Om Shanti Om?” Watta says. “The film industry is filled with such heteronormative worldviews. They don’t treat us as individuals who could have lives outside the screen,” notes Dee C, the director’s assistant.
Created by an all-queer team, the film was crowdfunded by a wide community of contributors and had its first screening at the Rainbow Lit Fest last year. “We wanted the film to be accessible, without outside opinions,” says Dee. The process also allowed them to build a set that mirrored the world they were depicting. For Dee, the experience was transformative. “I’ve never seen that many trans people in one room together. It’s so mundane for us to exist with each other—but seeing that on screen felt different.”
Feeling normal
At its core, the film insists on the ordinary. “What happens after coming out? After the struggle? What does a queer life look like on a Tuesday?” Dee asks. “It’s existing with friends, with chosen family—just trying to exist every day.” Yet, in the current political climate, even the basic act of existence is under scrutiny—particularly with the recently passed Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026.
Introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 13, the bill has sparked widespread outrage, with members of the queer and trans community taking to the streets in protest. The proposed amendments revisit key provisions of the 2019 Act, including the definition of a transgender person and the right to self-identification—recognised by the Supreme Court in the 2014 NALSA v. Union of India judgment. They also introduce mechanisms such as medical boards and district-level certification, which critics describe as invasive and exclusionary.
The proposed amendments revisit key provisions of the 2019 Act, including the definition of a transgender person and the right to self-identification—recognised by the Supreme Court in the 2014 NALSA v. Union of India judgment. They also introduce mechanisms such as medical boards and district-level certification, which critics describe as invasive and exclusionary.
Though written in early 2023 and finished in January 2026, the film feels eerily timely. Within this context, the film engages with the idea that care, shelter, and chosen family—often essential to queer and trans survival—can be reframed as coercion or even criminality.
“How do you define ‘forcing’ someone into being trans?” Dee asks. “If somebody offers you a roof over your head, they could be criminalised. Why?”
‘Why make this law?’
“There have always been laws attacking us—telling us that we can’t exist,” Dee adds. “But to criminalise the very community care we rely on—that boils my blood. I’m here because of the people around me.”
Watta, too, points to the absurdity—and danger—of such frameworks. “Even if people can be allured, the idea that someone could be allured into something as simple as painting their nails would only come from an existing desire,” they say. “It’s like peering into your house. We’re not talking to you, we didn’t ask anything from you—so why are you making this law?”
The film mirrors this intrusion through the presence of the police—agents of the state—who force their way into the apartment, accusing the group of abetting the kidnapping of Noori and demanding explanations.
For Anjali, who plays the transphobic cop Brijesh Singh in the film, this reflects a broader pattern. “The state behaves as if it’s offering something, but it keeps snatching,” they say. “There’s a clampdown on rights, and a tendency to not consult the very communities these bills affect. We’re seeing a deeply undemocratic way in which they’re being passed.”
They add, “There is so much malnutrition, unemployment, starvation—so many real issues in the country. And yet, the focus is on making life more difficult for more people. The state knows it needs to disrupt communities that come together to fight for each other’s rights. We are forced to prove our endurance again and again.”
Dancing as refusal
And yet, Don’t Interrupt… is not a film of despair. It is driven by anger that transforms into imagination.
Watta recalls growing up on films filled with spectacle—action, romance, fantasy—only to find queer cinema devoid of that same spark. “The cis-het world gets Interstellar, they get Jurassic Park… and all I was seeing were mirror shots where a person is looking in the mirror and crying,” they say. “Is that all there is to my life?”
Unlike conventional queer narratives that end with moral lessons of understanding and acceptance, tear-jerking tragedy, or dramatic resolution, Don’t Interrupt While We Dance simply ends in dancing. The flatmates return to celebrating the birthday, setting aside the ordeal at the police station and simply being in their space. “Dancing represents dancing,” Watta shrugs. It can be joy, desire, performance, showing off, or simply a way to pass time. “If you didn’t interrupt,” adds Dee, “the most we would be doing is dancing.”