THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Last year’s IFFK had focused on women in cinema, and this year too, the female presence seems strong. Auteurs in the ‘fairer of the sex’ seem to be in considerable number in most categories.
Two films from the Indian stock, which were shown on the second and third days of the festival, have turned heads for the evocative narratives centred around women.
Nidhi Saxena’s ‘Secret of the Mountain Serpent’ and Anuparna Roy’s ‘Song of Forgotten Trees’ take seemingly similar paths — of women who hide their free spirit as they navigate a world where their expressions are expected to be muffled, measured. The similarity also stretches to the journey of the filmmakers, both from places where life moves slowly and from families where conventions rule over freedom to be.
Silence is used deftly in both the movies, and can even be called part of the cast. In ‘Secret of the Mountain Serpent’, it punctuates a remote landscape, pauses to surface as sound and as slow bursts of dormant desire of a lonely woman from the hills of Uttarakhand. She finds it surreal to express her desire to a mysterious stranger, played by Adil Husain.“It was my view of how a woman spoke of what she felt deeply. Women can understand this better,” says Nidhi.
A woman’s perspective was also Anuparna’s focus in ‘Song of the Forgotten Trees’ — about the bond two women strike as they share space in a world where life has stared hard at them. Silence is used here to speak deep emotions, to rebel, to bond. The setting, however, is urban, its chaos prompting inner silences to express better.
“The characters have shades of women from my hometown in Purulia, a village where even watching films was taboo for a girl; where there was a relative, relegated into silence and widowed at 17, who bonded with her stepdaughter the way my protagonist does with her roommate,” says Anuparna, the first Indian to win the Best Director award in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival.
Turning trash into fuel
Sustainable answers to the state’s waste management challenges are being showcased at IFFK, where the government’s Kerala Solid Waste Management Project (KSWMP) has set up an interactive stall. The highlight of the stall is a Bio-CNG plant model that explains how waste can be converted into fuel. KSWMP officials are on hand to help visitors understand the technology. An interactive installation called ‘Harithamaram’ draws attention to the role of trees in maintaining ecological balance.