In The Forest One Thing Can Look Like Another (2023)

In The Forest One Thing Can Look Like Another is constructed through the director’s personal experience of living in the remote Himalayan mountain town of Manali, a historically popular destination for shooting Bollywood film songs. The glacial landscape of Manali has become a site where projections of the idyllic countryside are directed — rife with tropes of adventure, eroticism and romance. The work interrogates this thin layer of narrative practices, constructing tableaus of high-altitude mountains as static objects and backdrops for second-hand urban aspirations to happiness, while the precarious reality of living in a highly sensitive ecosystem spins an adventure far removed from most imaginaries.