Dandakaranya (Forest of Punishment)

Directed by Souvik Roy Chowdhury

Synopsis:

Dandakaranya is a short fiction folk thriller, shot with local amateur actors, which starts with documentary footage of a protest - the native tribal peoples of Chattisgarh are trying to protect a mountain they believe resides their Earth Gods from a private mining company. The protagonist Linga, has grown up seeing his father's killing and widespread human rights violation from the government in his village, through armed vigilantees and ethnic cleansing through the Salwa Judum program. We follow Linga's journey on the fateful day when the case against his father's death and the protest against the miners coincide.

Director Statement:

The central forested mining belt of India is sparsely populated by different groups of native tribal peoples. The film was envisioned keeping in mind different aspects of the UN 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development and set off through a grant by the Ford Foundation through National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. In the past two decades, excessive mining for exports and internal consumption have bulldozed over many sections of the population. The region has seen its fare share of violence, which has made guerilla fighter factions and illegal political parties thrive - promising, in vain, to protect the rights of the natives there. With no signs of development in these remote locations, the growing democracy has long overlooked any kind of rights for these people. The story resulted from my travels across the villages for initial research, and the background context referenced through Nandini Sundar's "The Burning Forest". Between 2005-2015 the area has seen gross human rights violation where minor locals where trained with rifles by the government to form vigilantee groups to fight against the illegal guerilla fighters, often resulting in encounters and rapes of innocent villagers.