In ‘Shadowbox’, the emotional punch of a family’s refusal to be defeated

The Berlin Film Festival (February 13-23) will see the world premiere of the Bengali-language Shadowbox (Baksho Bondi) by editor Tanushree Das and cinematographer Saumyananda Sahi. Das and Sahi, who are married to each other, are Film and Television Institute of India alumni who have collaborated on several independent projects, including Sahi’s documentary Remembering Kurdi), Prateek Vats’s Eeb Allay Ooo! (2019) and Kislay’s Aise Hee (2019). Sahi’s credits as cinematographer include the streaming series Trial By Fire (2023) and Black Warrant (2025).

Apart from Das and Sahi, other Indian titles are making a strong showing at Berlin this year, including Natesh Hegde’s Vaghachipani, a haunting tale of vice and ambition in rural Karnataka. Kush Badhwar and Vyjayanthi Rao’s installation Beneath the Placid Lake is about the displacement from a dam project in Telangana, while Ruse is a short film by Rhea Shukla.

Shadowbox is the sensitively observed, intimate story of a working-class woman’s heroic efforts to keep her household from falling apart. Maya (Tillotama Shome) is married to Sundar (Chandan Bisht) a former Army soldier from Uttarakhand with severe anxiety. Maya juggles several jobs to ensure food on the table as well as keep her teenaged son Debu (Sayan Karmakar) at school. When Sundar goes missing, Maya’s precariously ordered existence is seriously threatened.

Set in Barrackpore, Shadowbox draws from Das’s memories of her parents. In an interview,...

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