When did you first think of documentary as a medium to tell a long story?

My professor at Northwestern, Brent Huffman, had asked me to apply for a grant before I graduated. I had been taking Brent’s class on documentary filmmaking and had done some work in video for Deutsche Welle (DW), where I had done video stories on dairy farmers and Dharavi. Coming back to the grant, I had written a piece on the topic (refugee Afghans living in Delhi), and I had shot some footage in 2022 for a week. While applying for the grant, I decided that I should probably dive deeper into the story and make it a short documentary, instead of the seven-minute news piece that most people were doing.

What kind of preparation did you do before setting out to make a documentary?

I tend to overprepare. I go through the pieces on the subject and how they have been depicted previously. I will contact journalists who have worked with them, if they have any pointers on who is comfortable with journalists, etc. I benefited from the works of journalists, who told me about people’s past traumas, so I could tread lightly on certain topics. Apart from the journalists, I spoke to NGOs and people doing their PhDs on the subject matter. Not everything will yield something, but it will get you somewhere new, or they might put you in touch with someone within the thick of things. During my prep for this, I must have spoken to over a hundred people on the phone.

I remember there were a couple of features in India Today that set me off. It had another Afghan woman who was profiled in those pieces. There were a couple of short reportage pieces by the BBC about the protests of Afghan refugees, which helped me, and I had a friend, who I can’t name, who worked in the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees].

Cover of Far From Home. The documentary captures Afghan refugee life in the Bhogal Market area, where many displaced families rely on informal work and community support. | Photo Credit: Imdb

Were you intimidated on the first day of shoot?

The written piece and the first part of the shoot for Far from Home took place between September and October, 2022. Then we went back again in May 2023, which was three days long. The first day was terrible. I’d been talking to the subjects for about nine months. My cinematographer went and met our subject and her family, made them feel comfortable and reassured them that we genuinely cared about them. On the day I landed in India for the shoot, everything fell apart.

The Afghans were protesting in front of the UNHCR, which they do cyclically—it was on September 28th, I still remember the date. I hadn’t slept at all, and I decided to go meet the family—hopefully to reassure them about our presence. All Afghan refugees refused to speak to me. The UNHCR were supposedly trying to set up a meeting with community leaders, and one of the unwritten rules during such times is you don’t speak to the press.

I did not get anything done in the first two days of our shoots; we hit dead ends. I usually don’t give up easily, but I was pretty close to giving up around then. I realised my superpower in the situation was that I was a local. I had lived in Delhi for a decade. It was when I was in Bhogal Market that I learned about the handicraft centre. I knew one thing for sure: the protagonist had to be a woman. It was when I went to the handicraft centre that I met a bunch of these women, and Samira was one of them.

How much time did it take to build trust with her?

At first, she was concerned about showing us footage of their shoe shop (in Afghanistan) being burned and including it in the film. But I said that we needed it as context for their situation in India. There was this sequence in the film that I wanted to include in the final film, but we couldn’t find a place for it. She suddenly began talking about how she’s been doomscrolling on her phone since she came here from Kabul because she has no other way of being in touch with her homeland. She began crying while talking about it, how the Taliban were beating up women with sticks for not wearing a burkha ‘properly’.

Samira’s illness is mentioned in the film. Is it a physical or a mental ailment?

It’s a neurological illness. There’s a trigeminal nerve in the face, which gives her a lot of pain. There are times when bouts of pain become unbearable, and she can’t speak or do anything. At a screening that took place in the US, a doctor saw the film and said it’s common for American patients like Samira to shoot themselves in the face; they can’t take the pain. Even a surgery doesn’t guarantee that the pain will go away. Apparently, George Clooney [American actor] had the condition—he’s spoken about it at length. But the surgery is expensive, way outside the means of Samira.

Afghan women refugees make edible bowls to sell to restaurants and cafes in New Delhi in June 2017. Mukhopadhyay’s 33-minute documentary follows Afghan refugees in Delhi after the Taliban takeover in 2021, focusing on Samira Faizi and her family. | Photo Credit: NITA BHALLA/THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION

Do you get a sense of the situation regressing for Afghan refugees? Or was it always this bad?

They have been coming to India since the 1970s. The earliest ones settled in Lajpat Nagar. A large part of the population settled in Lajpat are financially well-off, and the ones with fewer means are settled in Bhogal Market. The situation is pretty much the same; the ones in Lajpat have stayed on for longer in India and have integrated into Indian society. Earlier in the 1980s, it was harder to tell an Afghan refugee from a local. Now, it is easier because of all the identification. After the passing of the CAA, it has become almost impossible to get any identification because of the political situation. For example, Samira [the protagonist] cannot get any documentation in India. If she cannot do that, she cannot open a bank account. Which means she has to take on a cash job. How many Delhi locals want to hire an Afghan refugee for cash jobs? They do not want to get in trouble with the government.

The conversation around refugees seems charged today. Is this a recent phenomenon?

After 2019, it’s gotten monumentally harder for a refugee to get any form of identification. Now, everything wrong gets pinned on the refugee influx when our own systems have been broken for a while. Socially, it’s like the otherisation has become that much more naked and rampant.

For a country that believes in “Atithi Devo Bhavah”, India has no refugee law in place.

If we, as a country, wish to become a five trillion economy by 2027 or a superpower, as we’ve heard on multiple occasions, we can’t have a situation where Indians will emigrate to other countries, but we won’t allow other folks to enter India. We’re not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. It’s not a great band of countries to be a part of: the others are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. The CAA, in my opinion, was an insidious way to weed out refugees, students from foreign countries. Especially, if you’re Muslim. Last year, the Indian government passed the Immigration Act very quietly, which empowers law enforcement to find and deport any refugee/immigrant they deem is ‘unsafe’ for India.

Rohingya refugees in Delhi. Featuring footage from Delhi and testimonies from refugees, the film highlights the challenges of living without formal documentation and access to services. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

What drew many viewers to the film is its portrait of Delhi as a city that thrives on migrant desperation.

I have had a similar feeling about Delhi for the decade that I lived there. It is a city of paradoxes, and the cruelty that you are talking about comes with the package. It was only after I moved to the US that I was able to put some distance between myself and my experience of living in Delhi. Only then was I able to see the exploitation in a more clear-eyed manner. I am a brown person in a country headed towards Christian fascism, so yes, I see Delhi through a fresh lens now. Maybe it was going through my daily plight of being a woman in Delhi, which did not leave me with the room to empathise with the living conditions of the migrants/refugees in the city. I saw that more closely in Mumbai.

Is the exhibition part of the job harder than making the film?

I’ve learned to market myself. It’s a huge challenge in my case, because I’ve felt more displaced after my move to America. We began by sending the film to as many festivals as we could. It was a great experience, seeing the audience’s live reaction to the film. We won an award at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival. Brent was more eager to get more people to watch the film, hence we undertook an Oscar campaign. It was a huge learning experience. I was here alone, most of my crew were in India.

Have you tried to screen the film in India?

The plan was to screen the film as widely as possible in the US, and after that, bring it to India. Which is why we approached Naseeruddin Shah to be an executive producer on the film, and he was gracious enough to agree after seeing the film. It was just a cold email I had sent to him. There was a screening announced at the New Delhi International Film Festival, where they announced our film, gave it an award, but didn’t eventually end up showing the film. Even though I know what their reservations might be, I don’t want to speculate on why that happened.

I plan on doing a string of screenings. Hopefully, Naseer sir can make it to one of the screenings. The immediate goal is to find a distributor and platform for the film in India. Once that happens, I can do the public screenings.