Original Title : Ballad of the Dolphin Woman
Year : 2026
Language : Assamese, English
Duration : 10 minutes
Shooting Format : Digital
Genre : Video Art
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Crew :
Writer, Director : Mehdi Jahan
Producer : Junge Akademie, ADK, Berlin
Cinematographer : Mehdi Jahan
Editor : Mehdi Jahan
Sound Design and Mix : Mehdi Jahan
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Cast :
Leila : Beatriz Gaspar
Sukaina : Mahsa Aleph
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Synopsis :
Ballad of the Dolphin Woman reflects on cinema’s responsibility at a time when images of extreme violence saturate daily life. Structured as an essayistic epistolary film, it sets the fictional tale of the Dolphin Woman in Assam alongside documentary reflections on protests against rising right-wing tendencies worldwide, from gendered violence to genocides to ecological disasters. These images testify to what the dominant media hides. The filmed letter, addressed to Indian filmmaker Priya Sen, whose praxis mirrors Mehdi Jahan’s, becomes a space where grief turns collective and cinema, through its fragility, transforms sorrow into thought. The film asks whether grief can become reflection and whether reflection can ignite action. In an age where horrors seem caught in an endless loop, filming becomes an ethical decision about who can still be witnessed. The film questions whether images still carry empathy and can connect us across centuries to those who endured the same violence we’ve inherited. Rooted in the Sufi oral storytelling tradition of Mehdi Jahan’s late paternal grandparents in Assam, the film gathers and reviews these questions through the cadence of myth. This fading tradition shapes the film’s structure, treating storytelling as a form of resistance to erasure. Two women, separated by time, yet bound by shared experiences, meet as if by miracle. Both were radical, politically conscious artists shunned by society, resisting patriarchal violence in their eras. Their histories overlap and recognise one another, and through their intimate bond, they confront patriarchy’s shifting forms while reflecting on the need for queer and eco-feminist solidarity.