The New Language of Queer Cinema: 3 Indian Shorts Rewriting Representation This Pride

Queer narratives are never settled in any fixed positions and are seldom cast in the mainstream patterns of the art. On the final day of Pride Month, it seems appropriate to go past the rose-coloured glasses of token performances to celebrate the movies that do not live on the melodramatic graces of tearful journeys and tokenism. These three stand-alone shorts take that discussion one step further by looking at themes frequently lost in the hyper-real cinematic world today Bollywood: queer frustration, tender sadness and the loneliness of desire.

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To answer why they make films, the words of the director and poet Anureet Watta became a little pointed as there was an idea of a contemplated thousand times. “I could not find representation in the films I watched,” they explain, “but I knew that if the world did not exist for me, I could make it up for myself.” An experimentalist in a template world, Watta’s films touch upon the tender, often damning aspects of being queer. It resists categorisation. Kinaara (2021) was described as a ‘poem in motion’, Oranges In The Winter Sun (2022) focused on small gestures of love like holding ‘hands and softer fruits’.

Drag artist Watta is an experimentalist of a template world, in her films, she explores sensitive and, in some cases, condemning, elements of being queer. “I could not find representation in the films I watched,” they explain, “but I knew that if the world did not exist for me, I could make it up for myself.”

It is not categorisable. Kinaara (2021) was established as a piece of poetry in motion, Oranges In The Winter Sun (2022) oriented on tiny things of love, such as holding of a hand and gentler fruits.

Their next upcoming film, Don t Interrupt While We Dance is more radical, a contemplation of queer anger as a reaction to erasure that is baked in. “This kind of work does not exist in isolation…it exists in a society, in a wider range of films,” says Watta. “I think my first audience is people who are looking for themselves in these stories, that’s the job that I want to do in the world. Not like ‘oh! my film will change the world’ because no, I am only a small part of this art world, and there is a bit of liberation in accepting that. But I trust my peers to do the other work because there are so many of us now.”

Chandradeep Das: Love in the autumn of life

Although Watta takes a leftist approach, Chandradeep Das, a Bengali film-maker takes a traditionalist angle in describing vulnerable eroticism. His short Jasmine That Blooms in Autumn just won the award of Best Indian Narrative Short at KASHISH 2025, and it is easy to understand why. The book is set in an old age home and portrays the story of two old age characters, Indira and Mira, who fall in love thinking of the autumn of their lives. “This type of dynamic has long been ignored,” Das says. “Feelings have no age bar, and you can fall in love at the end of everything, in the autumn of your life. Solace and companionship. That’s what everyone is seeking.”

Indira is reluctant and shy because she was confined in an abusive relationship. In comparison to this, Mira is outspoken and a confident woman who has her pain. The movie abounds in visual symbolism that is layered with garlands of Jasmine, lascivious looks, half-chewed paan; the pace of the movie adds the poignancy. Das smiles when I tell him that the movie is tender.

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“I’ve heard this adjective over and over again, that the film is ‘tender and delicate’. And it is. You find inklings of this feeling throughout because they cannot be physically close, and at this age, both are coming to terms with newfound sentiments.” Das' film pushes back against the generationally focussed/inspired nature of most queer cinema as well, illustrating the shift that can occur with desire as one gets older.

While Jasmine was a film desired, Neel Soni, who directed the only Indian documentary in the 2025 Student BAFTA Awards this year —Babli By Night, states that his film found him a lot earlier than he found it. “I never set out looking for someone to film,” says Soni from New York, where the film screened at the 2025 New York Indian Film Festival. “But after many trips into the forest and many conversations with Babban over the years, I realised there was something profound here.”

Babli By Night illustrates, the gut-wrenching journey of Babban, a trans forest officer that lived and thrived within the cooling flora of Uttarakhand in Jim Corbett National Park, but at its essence, the film follows the notion of healing within nature.

“I deeply resonated with the concept of nature healing the human mind, and I saw that within my own life. That’s the story I set out to tell initially. This is something that’s real and happening in (Babban’s) life, but it was also about how nature has these tendencies that we don't notice,” he says. It depicted major moments of life, like pandemics and Babban's HIV/AIDS diagnosis. “Babban said to me, ‘I just want to be happy, in the forest with my animals.’ I think that’s what stuck with me. It’s a film about someone choosing to be themself despite everything.”

Each of these three films were selected to foreground a reclaimation of the narrative by people that have a sincere investment in getting the story 'right'. And obviously there is much further to go, but you have to admit that there is a little bit of excitement in being able to actually see yourself on screen.

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