“Chai Darbari” at DIFF Virtual Viewing Room

We are delighted to share that Prateek Shekhar’s MIC Diploma film Chai Darbari shall be screened at the DIFF Virtual Viewing Room. The film will be available to audiences around the world for free from 17–26 June 2022.

Film synopsis: A search for 'truth' stumbles upon varied textures of conversations. Conversations carrying echoes from print, electronic and social media, redolent with the local atmosphere and the context of the city's past. Since 1992, Ayodhya has been a crucial ground for electoral politics and debates. Unverified and politically motivated videos, circulated on an ever growing WhatsApp web, have complicated the issue a little more. These videos are one-way dialogic conversations, encoded with an 'us versus them' subtext. Parallel to this, all arguments around Ayodhya overlook multiple lived realities of the residents. While these realities transmute into endless conversations over chai (tea) in Ayodhya, the nature of the discourse is significantly different in the cities. Chai Darbari is a small tapestry of a few such conversations.

Fourteen CDC student films have been selected by DIFF Virtual Viewing Room as part of its curation. For more information: https://online.diff.co.in/page/studentdocscdc/

Previous Awards and Screenings:
• Screened at Docuscape, IDSFFK 2020
• Selected for South Asian Documentary Film Festival 2021
• Shortlisted for TOTO Funds the Arts Award 2020
• India’s entry to the Oscars in the Documentary (Short Subject) Category 2020
• Selected for the Kolkata People’s Film Festival (KPFF) 2020
• Selected for screening at Kathmandu | Travelling Film South Asia 2020
• Selected for screening at CSAS Film Series | Travelling Film South Asia 2019
• Awarded Best Short Documentary at the International Documentary & Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) 2019
• Selected for SiGNS Film Festival, Kerala 2019
• Selected for the Urban Lens Film Festival 2019
• Selected for the Habitat Film Festival 2019