NAGARI 2025

PUBLIC REALM IN URBAN INDIA

NAGARI 2025 aims to capture the essence of public spaces in Indian cities. Public space is defined as places that are open and accessible to everyone – this usually includes maidans, gardens, waterfronts, etc. The Indian city often broadens this definition of public space, due to its high density, to include streets, footpaths, markets, alleyways, transport infrastructure, among others. Thus our public spaces are layered by use, scale and activity, varying across days, seasons, groups, and movements. This is the public realm. It is “where a city’s culture is expressed most freely and openly, and it is where the city is at its most democratic, honest, and energetic” (Martin, 2017).

Keeping public space as the central focus, Nagari will examine the complex interactions between people from different castes, classes, age, and gender, as well as address an important question – What are the layers that constitute the public realm in urban India?

THEME

FINAL FILMS

WINNING ENTRIES

AWARD CEREMONY

SHORLISTED ENTRIES

BLOGS

PEOPLE

Click Here to view the detailed brief.

GOLD BIOSCOPE AWARD

महाद्वार (Mahadwar – The Great Corridor)

Film By: Adwaita Patil & Yash Darekar
Mentored By: Rajula Shah

JURY CITATION:
The film powerfully elevates its first-person narrative through a thoughtful and expressive integration of both form and content, resulting in a work of striking emotional and intellectual impact. It conveys the subject’s knowledge with clarity, nuance and authenticity, supported by strong, visually compelling filmmaking. By addressing the complex and evolving challenges of public space in India’s rapidly urbanising cities, the film offers observations that extend beyond its immediate setting. Its contemporary relevance, international message and incisive perspective allow it to speak meaningfully to cities and audiences around the world, marking it as an outstanding and resonant contribution.

SILVER BIOSCOPE AWARD

MAUJ NI KHOJ (SEEKING FUN)

Film By: Aishwarya Gupta, Badal Maheshwari, Drashti Agrawal, Isha Thakkar, Mumtaaz, Sajida, & Soumyadeep Das
Mentored By: Deepa Dhanraj

JURY CITATION:
This finely crafted film offers a sensitive and compelling portrayal of the ways women’s lives are restricted within a conservative social environment. Its power lies in its quiet, unassuming approach, allowing the narrative to unfold without didacticism or overt tone. Through attentive cinematography, the film thoughtfully captures the spaces these women navigate, and the public and human interactions that shape their daily realities. The film’s strength emerges from the film’s subtlety with which it conveys its message – communicating depth and urgency through restraint, rather than assertion. The film’s simplicity, honesty and clarity make it a resonant and deeply effective piece of storytelling.

JURY COMMENDATION AWARD

पकड़म पकड़ाई (Pakdam Pakdai)

Film By: Swapnil A, Om & Sakshi
Mentored By: Sourav Sarangi

JURY CITATION:
This compelling film delivers a spontaneous and energetic portrayal of children’s fleeting yet meaningful engagement with urban spaces. By observing the world at their eye level, it reveals how children navigate and momentarily claim the city as their own. The cinematography is lively and thoughtfully composed, reflecting the filmmaker’s intimate rapport with the young people. This, combined with its understated approach and clear, memorable message, makes the film stand out as a sensitive and insightful work of storytelling.

JURY COMMENDATION AWARD

HISSA

Film By: Siddharth Kar & Susmita Talukdar
Mentored By: Pankaj Rishi Kumar

JURY CITATION:
Hissa is a strong and poetic film that introduces complex imagery and a distinctive stylistic voice to illuminate the lives of sidewalk workers and their families. The granddaughter’s narration of her grandfather’s tale adds a moving, lyrical thread, while the metaphor of the fish and the frog powerfully frames the displacement of vulnerable communities. Thoughtfully crafted and closely connected to everyday life, the film makes the concept of urban displacement both accessible and deeply affecting.

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD

महाद्वार (Mahadwar – The Great Corridor)

Film By: Adwaita Patil & Yash Darekar
Mentored By: Rajula Shah

TEXT DESCRIPTION:
Mahadwar journeys through the fading rhythms of Mahadwar Road — a historic street in Kolhapur that once pulsed with trade, devotion, and daily life. As large-scale redevelopment plans surround the Mahalaxmi Temple, the film reflects on what is lost when progress erases memory. Through nostalgic visuals, intimate sounds, and a deeply personal voiceover, the director revisits the street of her childhood to understand its transformation. Between the noise of politics and the quiet resilience of people, Mahadwar stands, asking: are development and expansion truly the same? What happens to the life of a street when its physical body disappears, but its pulse still lingers in memory?

The Nagari Film Festival 2025 opened on Monday, December 15 with the Nagari Short Film Awards session, marking the beginning of a three-day engagement with cinema, cities, and the public realm.

The 2025 Nagari Short Film Awards were introduced by jury chair Philip Enquist, Adjunct Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois Chicago, who introduced the awards by challenging the very essence of the public realm; “Who is the space intended for, who can be here, how does public space help to achieve humane cities, humane urban environments?”. Five awards were presented: the Golden Bioscope, the Silver Bioscope, two Jury Commendations, and the People’s Choice Award.

PANELISTS

Tanvi Karia

Assistant Director, CCF

Sanjiv Shah

Filmmaker | Editor | Producer

Deepa Dhanraj

Filmmaker | Writer

Ram Rahman

Photographer | Curator

This film aims to explore the quiet transformation of a liminal space beside Barasat railway station, from a morning auto stand to a night flower market and the resilient livelihoods that thrive within its rhythm.

In a city where he’s used to being unseen, a trans man joins a midnight walk with queer strangers, where loitering becomes a quiet rebellion against identity erasure. On the other hand, as he rehearses his debut play ‘Beyond the Bodies’, he recollects his erasure and the moments of magic that a community brings

Set in Mumbai’s ever-changing urban landscape, this documentary explores how public walls become sites of resistance, memory, and expression, while also revealing the fear, erasure, and control they provoke.

The fisherfolk of Nochikuppam navigate the shifting landscape of their homes in the wake of government interventions. Through myriad acts of preservation of materials, documents and oral knowledge, the film explores the people’s resistance and their relationship to space.

In Agra, seemingly designed for cars, children invent playgrounds out of footpaths, medians, and market edges. Pakdam Pakdai scales the city to a child with a child’s eye view of play, resistance, and imagination—where joy collides with heat, traffic, and exclusion, and the city is both a game and a question.

In the rapidly shrinking public spaces of South Bombay, two street barber brothers fight to preserve their dignity, legacy, and humble livelihood, operating on the edge of legality. As the city sanitises its image in the name of progress, we’re forced to ask: are we clearing mess, or erasing mobility?

‘Manaveeyam’ traces the life of a small urban street in Kerala’s capital city of Thiruvananthapuram, reclaimed by its people, where social inclusivity, civic responsibility and freedom converge, transforming into an accessible, socially just and inclusive public realm; a blueprint for the future.

In Chandigarh’s rigidly planned city, trees offer shade and shelter to informal workers on the margins seeking space and belonging in a city that never planned for their presence.

Set against the backdrop of a ₹1445 crore redevelopment plan for Kolhapur’s Mahalaxmi Temple, the film explores the emotional and economic ecosystems of Mahadwar Road — a historic market street. Through voices of traders, vendors, and residents, it questions: can public memory survive without physical continuity?

In the small city of Bhuj, two young Muslim women, Sherbanu and Mariya, navigate societal and familial restrictions, carving out fleeting and risky moments of joy in the neighbourhood and city. Their friendship reveals how the public realm means constraints and freedom, where small defiant acts create space for Mauj.

Fragmented Realities captures Kolkata during a time of unrest, where digital and real worlds overlap, revealing collective fear, protest, memory, and quiet hope within a shifting public landscape.

On a narrow street in Jogeshwari East, a group of young boys organise their own mini cricket league—reclaiming a congested public lane for play, joy, and community in a city starved of accessible open spaces.

CITIES & IDEOLOGIES

How Political Ideologies Shape The Public Spaces Of Indian Cities “The city is a product of a state of war between political and economic forces that shape and re-shape the urban landscape.” – Mike Davis 1 Cities are often perceived as consequences of planning, geography and economy. We perpetually criticise our cities, in search of more inclusive…
UNSPOKEN AGREEMENTS

“The street is a room of agreement.” 1 Kahn’s quip at his AIA Gold Medal acceptance speech holds as true today as it did in 1971. The quintessential Indian street is methodical madness personified. Heisenberg’s (1927) ‘Atomic Uncertainty Principle’ largely extends, in hypothesis, to the moving elements of the streetscape – we cannot accurately predict, at any…
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE IN HERITAGE PRECINCT

Fontainhas is a unique case where boundaries between private and public are blurred due to various spatial and social factors. Accredited as a UNESCO Heritage Zone in 1984, the area is known for its colourful Indo-Portuguese houses, narrow lanes, and pedestrian-friendly scale that evoke a ‘slice of European charm in India’. Fontainhas’ charm lies not…