Insides and Outsides

Insides and Outsides starts its journey from the end of 2019, when the government approved discriminatory citizenship laws and a Nazi Germany-esque registry, the combination of which threatened violent disenfranchisement of India`s Muslim community. In response to brutal state crackdown against Muslim students protesting the laws, massive gatherings led by Muslim women, sat vigil at neighbourhood-run, self-sustaining 24-hour sit-ins. Arbab`s sense of identity as a Muslim and his responsibility towards the community were jolted awake.

The film briefly spends time in Ahmedabad, a city traumatised and divided by the past ghosts of pogroms and mass exodus for the muslim community, eventually moving to Delhi - where the current uprising against the government was at its peak, also where his parents live. He probes their respective identities, and films their disagreements over how to cope with increasing religious discrimination and hatred, towards them and their community. In the midst of an unceasing pandemic, he explores his own anxieties against a fractured public domain, using home video, photographs, archival videos, animation and projections - and what is felt by his parents at a collective religious one, finding links between the two and holding them up to the light.

Cinema @ Harkat

This month, with love and sadness we bring to you a constellation of beautiful films centered around the idea of finding yourself in the vast and isolating landscaping of a metropolis, hurling towards modernity, giving us everything and nothing at the same time. 

We hope you love these works of art as much as we do <3