Experiencing Interruptions?

Three Sisters

Three Sisters is a poignant documentary film, directed by Putul Mahmood and produced by Ratnaboli Ray.

The terrain of the film is that of a neglected and marginalised one: three women with mental health conditions, who are also sisters, languishing in Lumbini Park mental hospital, a state run mental institution for decades now.

Three sisters, Shikha, Rupashi and Seema were forcibly admitted by their family to a public mental hospital in Kolkata, about twenty years ago. They have been living there ever since, separated from and neglected by their family who never visited them. On a hot humid afternoon in August 2017, an attempt was made by Anjali's team to persuade their family to take the three sisters back home. The film crew and Anjali's team travelled along with the three sisters to their home near the border between Bangladesh and India.
This is a story about the three sisters' longing for familial love and their tremendous grace and dignity in the face of denial of that love.

  • Putul Mahmood
    Director
  • Ratnaboli Ray
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    55 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    April 1, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    3,100 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    India
  • Country of Filming:
    India
  • Language:
    Bengali
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital Video
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16.9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 68th National Award, India
    New Delhi
    India
    National Award for the Best Film on Social Issues
  • International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala, India
    Kerala
    India
  • Kirti Film Club, Habitat Centre, India
    New Delhi
    India
  • Nandan, Kolkata, India
    Kolkata
    India
  • DIALOGUES, Calcutta International LGBTQIA+ Film & Video Festival 2022
    Kolkata
    India
  • Mubi.com
  • Mamacash on World Mental Health Day
Director Biography - Putul Mahmood

Putul Mahmood, an alumna of FTII, is a filmmaker, producer and screenplay consultant. She is also an Associate Professor at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, where she has been teaching in the Direction & Screenplay Writing Department for the past 17 years.

She is the Producer of the Indie Bengali feature film Cosmic Sex directed by Amitabh Chakraborty. The film premiered at the Osians Cine Fan Festival of Arab and Asian Cinema where it won the Best Actress Award and was widely distributed across international online platforms as well as having a theatrical release in Bengal.

She has directed several short fiction and documentary films including You Who Never Arrived featuring Irrfan Khan and Geetanjali Kulkarni, Man of Silence- Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, I Shoot U, Atasi, Three Sisters and Kajal. Atasi won the Best Film Silver Conch (under 60 mins category) at MIFF 2020.Three Sisters won the National Award for the Best Film on Social Issues at the 68th National Awards.

Putul Mahmood also works as a Screenplay Consultant on short fiction and feature films- Serious Men on Netflix starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, is one of her recent works in that capacity.

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Director Statement

‘As a filmmaker I did not want to show the mentally ill person as an objectified victim, with no voice of her own. Typically such films give primacy to what psychiatrists, friends and family think of the person. That kind of gaze reduces the person to merely a clinical case which is dehumanising. Both Producer Ratnaboli Ray and I did not want to do that. In my films Atasi and Three Sisters, the mentally ill women are the heroines of the film. They are powerful in their story– Atasi, in her ability to overcome her violent circumstances at home and Three Sisters, in their tremendous capacity for grace in the face of the most blatant kind of familial rejection. They are both love stories in a way- of requited and unrequited love.’