Guwahati

An anti-war documentary from the ethnic conflict-scarred Manipur is set to be screened at the ongoing 19th Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) on Saturday (June 20, 2026).

The 19th edition of the seven-day MIFF, South Asia’s oldest and largest festival dedicated to documentary, short fiction, and animation films, ends on Sunday (June 21, 2026).

Manipuri filmmaker Borun Thokchom’s “Battlefield”, an 80-minute documentary that revisits the battles of Imphal and Kohima during World War II, took 13 years to complete. Another film from Manipur, Trishul Yumnam and Yaso Sharma’s 15-minute animation “Story of a Forest”, has also made it to MIFF’s international competition.

Present-day Manipur and Nagaland were theatres of World War II in 1944. Fought between the Allied forces and the Imperial Japanese Army alongside Subhash Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army, the battles named after the State capitals are considered a turning point in the war in Asia.

Locals, however, continue to feel the impact of the battles.

“World War II turned Manipur into a frontline battlefield. Villages were bombed, people were displaced, and locals watched big foreign armies fight for their own freedom. That experience gave people new ideas about self-rule and nationhood,” Mr. Thokchom told The Hindu.

“Soon after the war, Manipur was merged with India. The destruction caused by the war and that forced merger left behind a deep anger, and that anger grew into the ethnic and separatist movements that have lasted ever since,” he said, adding that the “resistance movement” in the State initially used arms left behind from World War II. 

“Battlefield” was almost complete when the ethnic violence between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo communities erupted in Manipur on May 3, 2023. It eventually qualified for MIFF 2026, which sought films completed between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2025.

Mr. Thokchom said the subject of his documentary may be a war fought eight decades ago, but “it is very much related” to the present-day conflict in Manipur.

Greatest land battle

The film follows Rajeshwar Yumnam, an amateur war researcher from Imphal whose decades-long quest to uncover traces of the battles of Imphal and Kohima gradually transforms into an act of historical recovery and reconciliation.

Through Mr. Rajeshwar’s efforts—digging trenches, recovering relics, tracing wartime remains, and helping grieving descendants—the documentary opens a rare window into one of the least discussed theatres of World War II.

The film’s idea germinated after Mr. Thokchom and Mr. Yumnam met in 2013, the year the United Kingdom declared the battles of Imphal and Kohima as the fiercest and greatest land battles fought by the British Army, ranking them above even Waterloo and D-Day.

Critics in Manipur said the documentary attempts to revisit World War II not through military history, but through memory, grief, and its lasting human consequences. They said “Battlefield” could emerge as one of the most striking anti-war documentaries from India in recent years, not because it loudly denounces war, but because it quietly reveals how war never truly leaves.

“There are wars that end with treaties, and there are wars that remain buried in the earth. Long after armies retreat and history books close, fragments endure—unexploded shells beneath village soil, rusted helmets buried in paddy fields, and stories carried by grandparents who survived the devastation,” a review read.

In Manipur, World War II is still remembered as Japan Lan, or the Japan War.