NISHTHA JAIN, a young filmmaker from India, was awarded US $5,000 for her project entitled “At my doorstep”. The jury was moved by the filmmaker’s personal approach to her story: she will respectfully focus her camera on the workers who come to her door on a daily basis. In so doing, she wants to counter the apathy she sees around her and shine a light on those anonymous workers who struggle to survive in a megacity where their most fundamental rights are denied

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

A closer look at those who come to the filmmaker’s doorstep takes us into the parallel world of garbage collectors, domestic workers and delivery boys-all who toil to make other lives in Mumbai more comfortable. These workers are, like the people who enjoy their services, mainly migrants, but their presence here is more sharply defined by the lack of survival options back home. Nothing else explains why they should bear with such harsh living and unfair working conditions. Through the crisscrossing of various lives and livelihoods in typical housing colonies, the film will glean a sense of how millions work, interact and struggle for a firmer foothold in an indifferent, often hostile megacity.