No Stranger at All

Forum Expanded 2023

“For two years starting in 2020, this work has been forming along the edges of disquiet and premonition, in fragments and intensities, through wandering and not-staying. It has tried to find language for and ways across the bizarre upheavals of social and political values with the rise of fascism in India and a global pandemic. It has insisted on being amongst the things that keep from falling apart. Filmed in Delhi, these incomplete fictions are of the people, places, and protests that keep the language of hatred at bay and absorb the city’s grief and euphoria. In them are the continuous echoes of a violent and tenuous present.
The false closures and tenuous associations in this video/essay compose a timeline of the city at an angle through the time of this work. There is a shadowy sense of a protagonist who un-dreams it all; a stranger, who it turns out, is no stranger at all.” Priya Sen

by Priya Sen India 2022 Urdu, English, Hindi 40’ Colour International premiere

Crew

Director	Priya Sen
Cinematography	Priya Sen
Editing	Priya Sen
Music	Priya Sen
Sound	Priya Sen
Producer	Priya Sen

Produced by

Priya Sen

Priya Sen

Priya Sen is a filmmaker and artist who works across film, video, sound, and installation. She has an eclectic and itinerant practice with nonfiction film that explores forms and vocabularies for tenuousness and un-settling within urban frames. Sen received an MA from Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi and an MFA from Temple University, Philadelphia. She has taught nonfiction and experimental film practice and facilitates media labs, video modules, and workshops. Her films have screened globally at festivals and venues that include BFI London Film Festival, Outfest LA, Seoul International Women’s Film Festival, and The Kitchen NYC. She is currently teaching at the Srishti Manipal Institute in Bangalore.

Filmography

2008 About Elsewhere; 29 min. 2014 Noon Day Dispensary; 27 min. 2015 House of Earth; 27 min. · Stories of Us: Footnotes from Emerald Island; 14 min. 2019 Yeh Freedom Life; 70 min. 2021 Faasla; with Nicolás Grandi, 50 min. 2022 No Stranger At All

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2023