Independent films tend to be a speck in the shadow of the world's lucrative commercial film industries. India has on of the the most lucrative of them all; Bollywood, famed for its fanciful, escapist epics, which are fun, but frivolous.
Film festivals help draw important 'small' films into the light. Yarwng (Roots) has screened at numerous festivals in India, and at the Brisbane International Film Festival, where it was in competition for the NETPAC Jury Prize. (Continues below)
The film is anti-Bollywood. Far from glamorous, and certainly not frivolous. Its director, social justice advocate and Catholic priest Father Joseph Pulinthanath, quips that it cost less than the costume budget for a Bollywood film.
'We went into it full swing,' says Pulinthanath. 'I never allowed the money factor to bog me down. If you keep thinking about the money you never get going. There was a certain amount of foolhardiness about this whole project.'
Pulinthanath's passion for justice underpins the film's story, which takes place in Tripura, a state in culturally diverse North-East India. It is an ill-fated love story set against the displacement of villagers by the construction of a dam.
While Pulinthanath notes half-seriously that the love story was included 'so that people won't just walk out' ('at least they wait and see what happens to the girl and the boy',) for Pulinthanath the cultural context is much more important.
'North-east India,' he says, 'is an unknown portion, even to most of India. But it's very culturally rich. You find more than 200 ethnic groups, all of them with their own distinctive languages, culture, traditions, history ... an anthropologist's paradise.'
Pulinthanath has lived in Tripura for 15 years. As he tells it, the indigenous locals are 'people that have learned to live with loss'; victims of a demographic imbalance that stems from the migration of Hindus from Bangladesh following the partition of India.
'It became a 70/30 ratio,' says Pulinthanath. 'The people who crossed over became the 70 per cent. And as happens in a democracy, the government, language, education, and land became in favour of the 70 per cent. The indigenous people got pushed to the margins.'
Pulinthanath's 'love for the common man', and his close personal encounters with the indigenous locals, drove him to respond to the injustice.
'An Indian film done well, that can stand with the best productions in the country, will not only be a document, but will also uplift this community,' he