A 10,000$ grant is awarded to Indian filmmaker Manisha Halai for her project Orange, Beetle, Mother and I

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

When an invasive beetle species begins destroying her family’s ancestral orange orchards, an Indigenous filmmaker returns home to document it. What starts as a portrait of climate crisis turns inwards, unfolding into the story of three women: her mother fighting to protect the orchard, her sister dreaming of escape, and the daughter returning to hold on to what’s slipping away, with a camera in hand. Orange, Beetle, Mother and I is a meditation on Indigenous womanhood; on the many complex, resilient shapes belonging can take. And about remembering as an act of love.