Reality Check

Documentary Film Screening

An NCPA Presentation in collaboration with Cinema Collective

The NCPA has revived the Reality Check film series, which was started in 2014, to promote and encourage documentary filmmakers in India, whose work reflects life and culture in the country today in a provocative blend of creativity and integrity.

Ek Tha Gaon
Hindi Film with English Subtitles (61 mins)

Semla is a ghost village in the Himalayan foothills. Over years of dwindling prospects, the 50 families who once inhabited it have migrated to the city leaving only seven people behind. Leela, like her village, is old, resilient and long forgotten but, despite her struggles with loneliness and an aging body, doesn’t want to leave for the city. Golu, on the other hand, is the only young person in Semla—desperate to escape to an urban life but without the means to do so. Dreaming of a different future, she roams her desolate birthplace. Ek Tha Gaon charts Leela and Golu’s emotional journey and changing relationship with the place they call home. Their situation is poignantly captured by a saying that villagers have: the dead come back to visit the living. Now those of us who remain have only these ghosts for company.

Written & directed by Srishti Lakhera

The film screening will be followed by a discussion.

Admission on a first-come-first-served basis. NCPA Members will get preferential seating till 6:20 pm.

WE CARE ABOUT YOUR SAFETY: –

• Checking of body temperature with non-invasive apparatus at entry point  
• ‘Fully vaccinated’ certificate to be shown at entry point
• Wearing of mask is mandatory
• Proper social distancing to be maintained at all times