The Nagari Short Film Competition, an annual initiative by the Charles Correa Foundation, invites architecture enthusiasts, filmmakers and other creatives working on these intersections to cinematically respond to issues related to a dynamic and amorphous urban India. A “bioscope for the city”, Nagari directs focus on the frail realities of urban living in the country that surround us, often neglected, forgotten or simply ignored. Since its inception in 2020, the competition has coined themes for filmmakers to explore and respond to, including housing adequacy, people and their livelihoods, interactions with water and reclaiming urban commons. For its fifth edition, Nagari spotlighted Mobility in Urban India, emphasising topics such as connectivity and growth, choices in commotion and commute (or the lack thereof), gender and social roles, environmental impact, the people behind mobility, smart mobility and associated infrastructure, among others. While the festival saw several entries from all over the country, Sundari, directed by Sudarshan Sawant—a film capturing the social and environmental impact of Mumbai’s infrastructure development through an eponymous ferry as a fantastical vessel for storytelling—was announced as the winner, receiving the Golden Bioscope Award at the award ceremony held on December 14, 2024, in Mumbai.

Among the many entries received and the ones shortlisted, a handful of remarkable films shed light particularly on the limited public transport options available for low-income groups in cities, their plight, the challenges caused thereby and a serious lack of alternatives. I Don’t Run Down from Jalandhar, Punjab, personifies a shared three-wheeler coach, a cheap and easy means of public transport for locals, exploring its history and significance in the lives of low-income Punjabis. The film underlines the lack of suitable, affordable alternatives, even as they near redundancy. The Town on Water documentary is set in the city of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, shedding light on the relationship between the Dal Lake and the shikaras that are paramount to local livelihoods, transporting goods, locals and tourists. The journey of doodhiyas, informal milk suppliers from Delhi’s surrounding villages, is the focus of Cowboys of the West (UP), following their everyday commute.

People’s Choice Award winner The Last Local of Delhi spotlights the Ring Railway or Parikrama service, a suburban railway system of 21 stations introduced in the 1980s, which was discontinued in 2020 during the pandemic without any official announcement. Underlining the efficiency of the now-forgotten affordable public transport, the film features a series of interviews with former users of the railway, along with archival news footage of travelling locals discussing the affordability and efficiency of the system. Homes on the Line is set in the city of Rohtak in Haryana, exploring its relationship with a 4.5 km long elevated railway track, constructed at the cost of several homes being demolished to make way for the line. The film interviews displaced locals whose homes and businesses have suffered because of the new infrastructure, highlighting the flip side of development that often goes unnoticed.

Bicycles come alive in the film Sakhlya Ani Chaaka, addressing the lack of safety for cyclists on the modern roads of Pune, Maharashtra, as daily commuters are captured in-frame alongside bikes and cars. Out of the promised 300 km of cycle tracks under the 2017 proposed Pune Smart City initiative, only 10-15 km of cycle tracks exist due to the abrupt shutdown of the initiative in 2024. Similarly, Cycle of Life explores the once flourishing cycle rental system in Nagpur city, also in Maharashtra, through the life of Unesh Sarate, who has been using the affordable service for over two decades.

Inspired by the words of French philosopher Frédéric Gros, “only walking manages to free us from our illusions about the essential”, Iss shahar mein chalte hue (While walking through the city) follows daily-goods sellers such as Taufique who travel around the city of Mumbai on foot. The film underlines their invisibility against the prominent urban planning that sidelines such ‘captive pedestrians', unable to afford transport due to low-income livelihoods, thus being forced to walk every day.

Jury Commendation Award winner Level Up! explores how it took two decades of legal battles for Tamil Nadu to employ 58 accessible, low-floor buses in Chennai in August 2024, with the rest of the state still lacking these provisions. Interviews with disabled commuters reveal the lack of implementation of the law and the inefficiency of the service; they continue to wish for an independent and affordable travel experience where accessibility is no longer an amenity but the norm.

Delhi’s night bus 0543A is the focus of Shab-Parak | The Night-Fliers, which won the Silver Bioscope Award. Running from Anand Vihar to the Kapashera Border, the bus facilitates navigation for travellers at night. The stories of the passengers and bus driver Shabbir highlight the need for safe and affordable late-night urban transport systems for people with unconventional working hours, keeping the city moving.

The winning film, Sundari by Sudarshan Sawant and Dhanesh Gopal with filmmaker and educator Pankaj Rishi Kumar as mentor, stands out as a magical, mystical tale of a legendary ferryboat, exploring the past, present and future of transport on the precarious and dwindling waterways of Mumbai through the lens of local people and their lived experiences. In an insightful conversation with STIR, Sawant opens up about the creative process, thematic explorations and intent behind the film.

Bansari Paghdar: What was your initial vision for Sundari? Could you tell us more about the brainstorming, research and overall creative process behind the film?

Sudarshan Sawant: Sundari began with my daily commute to work on the century-old Versova-Madh ferry, a lifeline for thousands like me. While researching Mumbai’s ancient ferry routes, I came across a local myth about a ferry blessed by the sea [that was] said to have magical powers ensuring the safety of all its passengers. This legend became a lens to explore the current beautification of spaces—an idea tied to urban development but one that erases histories and sometimes livelihoods. At its core, the film is about a bridge that will connect Versova and Madh by road but will make the ferry service obsolete. We gathered stories about Sundari’s myth and spoke with the Koli community about Mumbai’s changing landscape. My editor, Dhanesh Gopal and I explored different ways to tell the story—archival footage, on-face interviews and capturing the myth firsthand. After multiple edits, we shaped the film into a blend of myth and reality, keeping Sundari alive not just as history but as a living memory of the sea.

Bansari: With different films responding to the idea of urban mobility in many interesting ways, how would you say Sundari approaches the idea in a physical as well as thematic sense?

Sudarshan: Nagari has always been a unique platform for original voices addressing urban issues, and this year’s lineup was no exception. While making Sundari, I was inspired by Italo Calvino’s quote: "The city displays one face to the traveller arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea." I wanted the audience to experience this contrast. The ferry sequences were all shot at night to preserve their magic, while the city was filmed in daylight with muted colours, emphasising its concrete dominance. The narrative unfolds across three timelines—past (Smita narrating the myth of Sundari), present (Rakesh, a ferry operator, explaining the current reality of Versova -Madh ferry service) and future (Rohan, reflecting on what has been lost at Bandra-Worli). Through their voices, the film captures what was, what is and what may soon disappear.

Bansari: The film seems to work on a mix of non-fictional as well as fictional, almost mythical storytelling. How did you work to bring these two together in the film?

Sudarshan: The blending of non-fiction and myth was intentional from the start. The legend of Sundari was always central to the film, presented through voiceover to exist as a fluid, intangible memory—complemented by night shots of the ferry.

The documentary’s factual grounding comes from real people and their lived experiences. Interviews with Rakesh Chatri, Devendra Tandel, Rajhans Tapke and others from the Koli community shaped the narrative. Travelling with Rohan through Bandra and Worli further revealed the geography and personal histories tied to these coastal spaces. As someone drawn to the genre of magical realism, I wanted Sundari to exist in that liminal space between reality and myth. The film does not separate the two; rather, it allows them to flow into each other.

Bansari: How would you say filmmaking—especially at a grassroots level—carries the capacity to see or amplify the gravity of issues that shape our urban reality?

Sudarshan: Grassroots documentaries, made with complete freedom and without the burden of corporate studios or heavy finances, offer an intimate look at urban realities, capturing the voices of those who live them. As cities expand and development takes centre stage, ecological and human concerns are often pushed to the margins. These films bring such overlooked realities into focus, revealing the struggles of those directly affected. Beyond storytelling, they serve as archives of disappearing histories, spaces for debate and challenges to mainstream narratives. Through such films, urban development is seen not just as an economic shift but as a force that reshapes lives, histories and our connection with the environment.

While reflecting urban mobility issues with sincerity, sensitivity and the resultant pining relatability, the films draw our attention to the unfortunate groups that continue to suffer the brunt of enduring urban disparities in something as essential to survival as commuting in their cities of residence. Their disheartened, frustrated and rather hopeless sense of being palpably comes across in interviews and narratives from these films, while they continue to be failed by state machineries, policies, schemes and initiatives that are proposed, announced, initiated and shut down without ever being properly implemented in what seems like a vicious cycle. After nearly eight decades of being a ‘developing nation', the country still crumbles under the taxing demands of both modern transport infrastructure as well as intra-city connections for the least privileged, underdelivering on both fronts. Even as the increased privatisation of urban mobility commons—something governments ought to take seriously as a public right—continues to loom large, initiatives such as Nagari raise questions and encourage powerful discourse around the subject, with independent films and storytelling emerging as a viable medium to unmask the dysfunctional nature of urban systems around the country, impinging upon the nexus of ‘smart cities’ ineffectually shaping an India of tomorrow.