From classrooms to festival screenings, debut filmmaker Aditav Dowerah’s retelling of this Assamese folk tale is creating waves

It is an animated short film that re-tells the folktale of Tejimola, through the eyes of our protagonist’s personal experiences. It talks about queerness, gender expression, and the mere act of existence as a form of resistance. It explores different visual styles and metaphors.

Tejimola’s story is incredibly graphic and brutal in nature- but has an incredibly mystical quality that carries across the narrative. I call her a shapeshifter in the film because that’s how she keeps coming back from “the dead”. This very nature of Tejimola constantly changing her form and coming back stuck out to me as a queer experience of fluidity of form. Queer folks often use their own body and the way they present themselves as a way of expression and protest- they are also constantly shifting. In a society that is built around boxes and boundaries, fluidity is confusing, misunderstood, and rejected. Teji’s story is an obvious allegory of queer resistance, and I just wanted to shine this new light onto this folktale. 

With short films, making a trailer gets a bit tricky because there’s only so much of the story that you can reveal. My attempt was to mainly capture the visual styles and overall tone of the film, and leave a sense of intrigue for the audience. 

I think the beauty of folktales is that although they are a fantasy, there is always some value or learning that one can draw from them, which makes them timeless. I think retellings and adaptations are powerful; it makes one rethink their entire perspective. It presents something that is so familiar to people, and then adds the unfamiliar forces to rebuild their worldview. And I think this questioning of the norm is what the world needs more of. 

It’s quite interesting to answer this because I wasn’t formally a film student. My project took form as an animated short halfway through the project, but the timeline didn’t allow me to have a formal team to work with. Finding my narrator’s voice was an online collaboration between my friend Chelsie from Guwahati. Remote working required a lot of back and forth. Finding queer Assamese folks to work with is not the easiest, but I’m so glad for the online community.

I am also not a sound designer, and that was one of the more challenging parts of the production. I wanted to include a famous Assamese song as well, but couldn’t get the rights to include it. Finding workarounds to these kinds of “official” aspects of filmmaking took most of the effort. Being given a formal understanding or a resource to guide us through this would have been really helpful.

It feels so immensely gratifying. I remember signing up to volunteer for it in 2019, and now having my work officially become a part of this event, with such incredible and moving films, it is nothing short of a dream. 

Taking my film beyond the classroom and into real-world spaces, watching newer audiences interact and engage with it, hearing all the conversations and feedback, are opportunities that film festivals that offer are invaluable. And in turn, the future avenues that open up because of this, lays the groundwork for a career in cinema.

Yes! This selection gave me the confidence to submit to other international and national film festivals. I am waiting for a revert.

Yes. But it is also difficult for me to answer this, having made only one film. As a viewer, my discovery of new regional films comes through either OTTs or by word of mouth. The first accessibility barrier, being language, is largely taken care of by increased and better subtitling efforts. But to address the next, the distribution aspect, is a lot more complex, I assume. 

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