You can leave a place, but sometimes that place doesn’t leave you. That was Nagaland for Thiruvananthapuram-based filmmaker Advaith Ashok.
A trip to the hills for a documentary also gave him a poem — one shaped by the people, landscapes and moments he experienced in the northeastern state. That poem later became ‘Nagaland: A Visual Poem’, an experimental travel short film.
A fourth-year filmmaking student at RV University’s School of Film, Media and Creative Arts, Bengaluru, Advaith had travelled to the northeastern state as part of a team documenting the ‘Tigerman’ or Tekhumiavi — a figure from Naga folklore that explores the spiritual bond between a human and a tiger.
While that documentary is now in post-production, the journey left him with another story. Between scheduled shoots, he found himself capturing mist-covered hills, chance encounters, winding roads and candid moments, unknowingly gathering the pieces of another film.
“Nagaland was a different travel experience. The northeast is often exoticised. Even I had certain ideas about it. But once I arrived, it felt completely different. It was such a welcoming place. I was there only for 10 days, but it felt like a second home. The trip gave me the confidence that I could go anywhere, stay anywhere and trust the people around me. That sense of community stayed with me,” he says.
The journey home became the beginning of another creative process. A poet long before he became a filmmaker, Advaith began writing about everything he had experienced.
“While travelling back on the train, I started writing a poem about Nagaland. As I wrote, every image from the journey came back to me.”
It was only later, while looking through the footage he had shot outside the documentary, that he realised the visuals and the poem belonged together. The result was ‘Nagaland: A Visual Poem’ — a travel short film with no dialogue. His verses carry the narrative through landscapes, faces and little moments.
“When I screened it at the university, everyone liked it. They suggested sending it to the Mumbai International Film Festival. It got selected and got screened in the non-competitive category. That was a huge experience for me as a filmmaker in my early years. Now, I’m planning to send it to more festivals,” he adds.
For Advaith, the film is not a travel guide to Nagaland. It’s postcards from his experience there. “I wanted to show the Nagaland I saw. A place is made by its people and the connections you build there. I wanted to present that vision, one rooted in human connection.”
Films were a constant presence in Advaith’s childhood, thanks to movie nights with his father that gradually nurtured his love for cinema. Although he was initially drawn to acting, filmmaking eventually became his calling.
That passion found its fullest expression in Nagaland: A Visual Poem, a one-person project in which he handled everything himself — from cinematography and editing to the film’s overall creative vision.