Renowned Delhi photographer Sohrab Hura’s 17-minute film The Coast will have its world premiere at the virtual edition of the Berlinale’s Forum Expanded section.

Hura is only the second Indian photographer after Raghu Rai to be part of the global photography collective Magnum Photos.

The 16th Edition of Forum Expanded selection consists of shorts, medium-length films and features, and will screen 17 films as well as art installations. In the Shorts program, a total of 20 titles will compete for the Berlinale prizes this year. European Film Market runs from march 1 to 5, 2021.

Hura’s short film The Coast, is part of photobook of the same title, a larger project The Lost Head and the Bird, which explores “the frightening post-truth world, with a focus on the socio-political environment in India.”

“As the country has gradually slipped into growing polarization and violence, Hura noticed that his parents were becoming victims of disinformation. He felt the need to express his observations and unease through his own visual language, and the project was first released as a short film (which in addition to Hura’s photographs, also uses an archive of found and researched images). The photobook is its most recent iteration, and while the film and the book use different approaches, they both explore storytelling through visual elements,” said Olga Yatskevich in Collector Daily. “The photobook is its most recent iteration, and while the film and the book use different approaches, they both explore storytelling through visual elements.”

The Coast opens with an absurd short story that leads into a sequence of images taken along the Indian coastline. The Coast centers around the character of Madhu, who has lost her head – literally. Her head was stolen by her lover, and other characters includes a fortune-teller, an idiot photographer — and story is retold 12 times in The Coast, photobook.

The Coast can be watched by the Press and EFM Industry during Berlinale EFM 2021 beginning March 1.

Hura’s earlier film Bittersweet focuses on the filmmaker’s mother—diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia—and her dog, Elsa. A search for meaning and closure, and a means of questioning and discovering the banalities of everyday life.