FREEDOM

Growing up in a newly free India, film-maker Arunaraje Patil came to be deeply invested in the idea of freedom - for herself, for those around her and for the society she was growing up in. To be truly independent, though, there was a lot of unlearning and disengaging she had to do: from conversations of the past, from who she knew herself to be and from the image that she had trapped herself in. It was with her fourth film Rihaee (1988) that Patil rediscovered herself and her own creative expression. That movie was a declaration of intent, one that set her on a journey that continues to this day. Freedom: My Story is the chronicle of a radical thinker and film-maker in a male-dominated world, her struggles, her inspirations, the prejudices she had to deal with and, ultimately, the freedom her art offered. This is as much the story of one immensely inspiring life as it is an acute look into a young, changing nation.