Documentary 'Child of Empire' depicting India's partition gets premiered at Sundance

In these uncertain times when almost all theatres and cinema are slowly opening up owing to the hindrances put forth by the pandemic, The Sundance film festival is back with its's new edition for movie enthusiasts and its 2022 lineup was unveiled recently and eventually, the animated Virtual Reality Documentary (VR) "The Child of the Empire" will be exhibited, where a unique cinematic experience promised as the viewer will witness everything as if each and every happening is taking place in front of your eyes through VR.  "Child of Empire"' depicting the India and Pakistan partition has got its place there and it is all set for its world premiere. The Sundance film festival is a platform for powerful storytellers and other artists and it is organised every year but for the past few years, it got cancelled considering the current scenario. The documentary"child of the empire" is an initiative by project Dastaan, a non-profit organisation that reconnects refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India to their ancestral communities with the help of storytelling and films.

'Child of Empire' focuses on partition era

Inspired by the partition era, the film revolves around a 7- year old child and how he witnesses the 1947 partition between India and Pakistan and it is seen through his eyes how the biggest migration happens, the film also navigates through colonialism, sectarianism and the situation of crisis with deep politics and it has the central character named Ishar Das Arora, a Punjabi boy from Attock arriving in Pakistan with a Mohajir girl, Zarina Akram who fled from her home in Delhi and how she also stayed with refugee's in Bengal. Series of events are depicted through flashbacks as to how Ishar was a child and he goes through everything from hiding from a violent mob to ruthlessly killing people to seeing people die in front of his eyes.

The period documentary portrays historical flashbacks and struggles that people faced during the partition era and it is well conveyed through archival content. The main idea of the film is to educate the masses about the critical and difficult situations that our country has to undergo during partition.

Sundance Film Festival 

Like the previous edition of the Sundance film festival was held virtually, but this year, movie lovers could enjoy it from the venue live in Utah from January. The festival aims at bringing people and artists together under one roof for the premiere's of some amazing groundbreaking works and it has taken a good initiative to support unknown or less known artists by giving them a good platform. Every year hosts a variety of programmes to support independent and powerful storytelling and its religious fans are really excited as this year the lineup is quite interesting with works of some amazing artists. The Sundance film festival 2022  line-up reflects the age of reckoning and films addressing racism and abortion are among the 82 titles that will get screened at the film festival. It includes films from Lena Dunham, Amy Poehler Netflix's Kanye West documentary, documentaries on Princess Diana and many more exciting films, the line-up is selected from 14,849 submissions from the US and other international countries.  

As of now, the Sundance film festival is hosting in-person screenings but the plans might get turned due to the fast spread of the new covid variant "omicron'". But at the same time, the organisers are taking necessary safety measures to take care of the health of the general public and they have arranged for COVID testing centre's where the attendees will have to show their negative test result reports and also, covid -19 vaccination certificates have also been made mandatory for the sake of public health and safety.

IMAGE: AP