Set in a time when the technology of teleportation is commonplace, a man travelling from Delhi to Pune gets lost. His pregnant wife sets out on a search for him and, in the process, has to fight customer service and go through an absurd media trial.
In another story, a man undergoes metamorphosis when a flowering plant starts growing from inside his mouth. This is a metaphor for his transition from father as a man to his daughter and, by the end of the story, to father as a woman. It is a journey of a teenage daughter embracing the new image of her father.
Set in a time when the technology of teleportation is commonplace, a man travelling from Delhi to Pune gets lost. (A still from Lost in Teleportation)
These films, Lost in Teleportation directed by Tanmay Gemini and The Flowering Man, by Soumyajit Ghosh Dastidar are among the five Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) student films have been shortlisted for the 16th International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK), which will be held from July 26 to 31 in Thiruvananthapuram. The festival is organised by Kerala State Chalachitra Academy.
Gemini, 24, who studied computer science and then took a direction course at FTII about the idea of the film, says, “I am interested in science, and once I read that if teleportation is at all possible in the future, the matter that is being teleported will be destroyed at the source and recreated at the destination. So what if it doesn’t get recreated? It is a trope in science fiction, be it teleportation or any other technologies gone wrong.”
But through it, he also wanted to shed light on this generation’s existing problems with technology. “We are losing our sense of self in various ways, tech companies are collecting data and yet no one is concerned about privacy. So I wanted to extrapolate that and tell a story about a time when we lose ownership of our physical body, a time when even our physical bodies are a service provided by a company,” says Gemini.
Dastidar, who hails from Durgapur, West Bengal, has studied direction and screenplay writing from FTII. About how he conceived the idea of The Flowering Man, he says, “There is this popular childhood lore that if you swallow the seed of a fruit, a plant will start growing in your body, in winter when we would have oranges everyone would say spit out the seed, or a plant will start growing. I used to wonder how this is so unreal and what if somebody has done it. How would we see that person walking on the road, in the bus or a train with a plant coming out of their mouth, there is some kind of absurdity to that image, that stayed back with me.”
In another story, a man undergoes metamorphosis when a flowering plant starts growing from inside his mouth. (A still from The Flowering Man)
But Dastidar wanted to do more with that image and see what layers he could add to a story. So came the idea of his Shashi’s transition from a human being to a plant and also his transition in gender from a father as a man to a father as a woman to his daughter.
About the reality that Dastidar’s experimental fantasy is rooted in, he says, “I have met a lot of older queer people. Today, the idea of coming out is very different from even ten years ago. In the 80s and 90s, when there was not much awareness, people gave into the norms of heteronormative society, and there was an older generation of queer people in traditional family structures. Coming out can happen at any time; for some, it comes in 15 to 20 years, but for someone else, it might also take 40 years.”
When the character Shashi doesn’t feel comfortable in his body anymore, a plant starts growing, and the seed of repressed sexuality finally starts blooming. However, at a point in the movie, his daughter confesses to him, “I was so angry with you. I was talking to a friend, and I said my father is dead.”
“That’s a violent statement from a daughter,” says Dastidar, who highlights that as children we always have a complaint with our parents that they don’t understand us and we feel that they are supposed to. “But on our part we also have to understand who they are, I don’t think we give them that kind of space to be comfortable themselves,” he says.
The Flowering Man had its world premiere at MAMI last year and was also screened at numerous film festivals after that. Both the films were also recently screened at MIFF.
Other FTII films shortlisted for IDSFFK are Waterman by Vishwas K and Akka River & Songs by Sanika Mulye. Sunflowers Were The First Ones To Know by Chidananda Naik, which won the first prize of La Cinef at Cannes this year, will also be screened.
About what a screening at IDSFFK means to him, Dastidar says, “This film festival only focuses on non-fiction and short films. Otherwise, at other festivals, people only run for fiction feature films. It is important to dedicate space for smaller films because I believe innovation mostly happens through shorter pieces of work because stakes are low for experimentation.”
Lost in Teleportation directed by Tanmay Gemini and The Flowering Man, by Soumyajit Ghosh Dastidar are among the five FTII student films that have been shortlisted. 
Set in a time when the technology of teleportation is commonplace, a man travelling from Delhi to Pune gets lost. (A still from Lost in Teleportation)
In another story, a man undergoes metamorphosis when a flowering plant starts growing from inside his mouth. (A still from The Flowering Man)
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