Onlykashmir.in News Desk
The Mumbai International Film Festival became a space for both celebration and critical reflection on Thursday as a panel of seasoned and emerging documentary filmmakers gathered to examine a central question facing the medium today: are young filmmakers genuinely redefining what a documentary can be, and if so, what is driving that transformation?
The answer that emerged from the discussion was an emphatic yes, but the explanation is layered and nuanced. Panellists included acclaimed filmmaker Prabal Khaund, writer-filmmaker Preety Sharma, emerging filmmaker Samapti Das and veteran filmmaker-academician Prof. Himansu Sekhar Khatua. The session was moderated by Pankaj Saxena, Artistic Director of Film Festivals at the National Film Development Corporation.
Prof. Khatua, who heads the Biju Patnaik Film and Television Institute of Odisha, argued that the most significant shift in contemporary documentary filmmaking is structural rather than merely aesthetic. Young filmmakers today, he observed, enjoy unprecedented access to filmmaking tools and digital platforms that did not exist for their predecessors. They develop an idea and immediately begin creating, without the institutional gatekeeping that once filtered who could enter the field. Digital platforms have opened new audiences, and the growing influence of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies is only expected to deepen the quality and versatility of the medium.
Samapti Das, whose two films were screened at the festival, spoke for the urgency of greater awareness about documentary filmmaking among young people. Documentaries, she argued, are not merely an alternative to commercial cinema but a medium capable of taking filmmakers to remarkable heights. She also acknowledged the rigorous demands of the form and called for greater trust from producers in emerging talent.
Preety Sharma brought a practitioner’s candour to the conversation. Many filmmakers, she said, spend years producing a documentary despite severely limited resources, minimal funding and insufficient crew. The challenge of reaching audiences once the film is made remains the hardest problem of all, and she made a case for more formal exhibition and distribution infrastructure beyond the YouTube model.
Prabal Khaund, a National Award-winning filmmaker who has documented indigenous communities in Northeast India, spoke of the patience and cultural sensitivity that the medium demands, and of the role technology can play in making that work more impactful without diminishing its integrity.
What united all the voices on the panel was a conviction that contemporary documentary filmmaking is undergoing a genuine renewal, driven by storytellers who are turning the camera inward, toward personal experience, human struggle and social change. That authenticity, combined with technological access and social commitment, is expanding the audience for documentary cinema in ways that would have seemed improbable a generation ago.
