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Still from Raiding The Archives: The Personal is Political

DIFF Conversations

Raiding The Archives: The Personal is Political

Dhruv Sehgal, Geetanjali Gurlhosur, Heilika Pikkov, Uttkarsh Parmar with Aakanksha Jadhav

Screening at DIFF 2026

Thu29 to Thursday 29 Oct · House of Peace and Dialogue
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Runtime
90 min

Synopsis

A new generation of storytellers is going back to the personal archive to narrate their own lives, and through the intimate, is arriving at the political. As filmmakers are coming of age and revisiting home videos to find traces of their past selves, or as they look to their family and themselves as protagonists, some questions emerge. What care must be taken when telling your own story? How does one steer clear of navel gazing at a time when the personal essay boom and the memoir industrial complex has taken over, fetishizing the self? What can the personal archive offer in terms of tenderness, intimacy, and irreverence that re-makes cinema in its form?

Speakers

Dhruv Sehgal Dhruv SehgalPanelistDhruv Sehgal is a writer, actor and director, best known for Little Things and Modern Love: Mumbai. After six years in non-fiction, he moved into scripted storytelling.Geetanjali Gurlhosur Geetanjali GurlhosurPanelistGeetanjali Gurlhosur has been a journalist, researcher, documentary filmmaker and poet. A Bitchitra Collective Fellow, she is currently working on her debut feature documentary Where Do We Go From Here.Heilika Pikkov Heilika PikkovPanelistHeilika Pikkov is an Estonian documentary filmmaker focusing on auteur-driven documentaries. She also teaches in the Documentary Film MA programme at the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School.Uttkarsh Parmar Uttkarsh ParmarPanelistUttkarsh Parmar is an Ahmedabad-based director and editor. Formerly an assistant director on Gujarati films, he now focuses on stories rooted in lived experiences.Aakanksha Jadhav Aakanksha JadhavModeratorAakanksha Jadhav is a Senior Programmer at DIFF and Head of Programme at AniMela. Her curatorial work focuses on independent South Asian animation and short films.

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