Bay Area filmmaker and journalist Ankita M. Kumar’s documentary film Far From Home won the Best Short Documentary award at the Chicago South Asian Film Festival held in September. The film, which tells the story of Afghan refugees in India, was adjudged the best among 73 documentary films showcased during the festival.
The film screened on Thursday, September 19 at AMC Theaters in downtown Chicago. The central character of the film is Samira Faizi, an Afghan refugee who moved to India in 2021 and is now grappling with slow asylum processes and the lack of a refugee law that threatens her existence. The film also features her family, other Afghan refugees in the Bhogal market area of Delhi, representatives of human rights organizations, and political actors in the country.
“When you talk about refugees, you usually visualize refugees on a boat going to Europe, or refugees in the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Kumar. “After the implementation of CAA in 2019, I really wanted to look at the state of refugees in India, so I decided to work on a story about Afghan refugees in India.” Kumar is the first person to make a film about Afghan refugees in India.
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the American Institute of Afghanistan funded the film which is produced by Emmy-nominated producer Brent E. Huffman. The film also featured at the American Documentary and Animation Film Festival in March and will feature at the Tasveer Film Festival in October. Far From Home also won four awards at the CFM Film Festival in the US.
“I’m hoping that this award leads to us getting picked up by some distributor, because we would like to show it across India, and we want more people to watch this film,” said Kumar about how the CSAFF award will impact the film’s journey going ahead.