Private Project

In the Filmy Room

Filme Camra (Fil-mee Kam-raa) is a participatory documentary set in a village in Uttar Pradesh, where a group of children come together in a shared space they name “Filme Camra” to explore filmmaking. They pick up the camera, think of stories, act, direct, and sometimes sit and talk. As they build their own narratives, their choices begin to reflect the world around them, shaped by films they have seen, everyday realities, and early gender roles.

After earlier unfinished attempts, they return to the process with more patience. One story, a mystery about a psycho killer, moves quickly into production. Roles are chosen informally, with boys taking camera and direction, and girls in supporting roles. The film is completed, but when they watch it together, the girls say it does not feel like theirs. One of them proposes another story about a leaf travelling freely.

The documentary observes how storytelling, process, and gender intersect from an early stage.

  • Payal Chauhan
    Director
  • NID Ford Foundation, NDBI SSIP
    Producer
  • Kalash Jain
    Editor
    Riverbed of Dried Petals, Traces of the Motherland
  • Akshita Rajawat
    Participant
  • Dev Rajawat
    Participant
  • Kanishka Chauhan
    Participant
  • Yashwardhan Singh Rajawat
    Participant
  • Abhijit Chetia
    Sound Design
  • Kalash Jain
    Sound Design
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Filme Camra
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    22 minutes 33 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    October 31, 2025
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Country of Filming:
    India
  • Language:
    Hindi
  • Shooting Format:
    Full HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - National Institute of Design
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Payal Chauhan

Payal Chauhan is a filmmaker and storyteller from Uttar Pradesh, India. She holds a master’s degree in Film and Video Communication from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. A commerce graduate turned filmmaker, she began writing poetry and short pieces during the COVID-19 lockdown, which led her to cinema.

Growing up in a village shaped by patriarchy and caste, her work draws from lived experience and focuses on social realities. Her practice is participatory, often involving children and communities in collaborative storytelling processes.

Her short documentary Such Madwomen! has been officially selected at several festivals, including the German International Ethnographic Film Festival (Göttingen, 2024), International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (2024), Beyond Borders Feminist Film Festival (New Delhi, 2024), Eyes and Lenses Review (Warsaw, 2024), Freiburger Filmforum – Festival of Transcultural Cinema (2025), and Indian Film Festival Stuttgart (2025). The film was also a finalist at Toto Funds the Arts (2024).

She is a recipient of the NID Ford Foundation Grant and the NDBI SSIP Fund. Through her work, she is interested in creating spaces for shared authorship and enabling voices from rural contexts to participate in storytelling.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I grew up in a village where films were rare, but stories were everywhere. Watching films, especially for girls and women, was neither encouraged nor imagined. The idea that cinema could be studied or created did not exist around me. Even today, many people in my village do not know that I studied filmmaking.

For me, filmmaking has become a way to make sense of where I come from. It is a way to claim space, to say things that often remain unspoken, and to question who gets to tell stories. What continues to shape my practice is my engagement with children, their curiosity, the way they observe, question, and imagine without hesitation.

Filme Camra emerged from conducting filmmaking workshops with children in my village in Uttar Pradesh. What began as a structured activity slowly turned into a shared space. I brought what I had learned, and they brought their own experiences, questions, and ways of seeing.

The film is a result of this process. It is not just about access to filmmaking, but about participation, collaboration, and what unfolds when children begin to make their own stories. Through this process, I found myself returning to my own context with a different understanding and listening more closely to voices that are often overlooked.