Addressing the Elephant in the room

Kartiki Gonsalves, who is part of the jury at the upcoming All Living Things Environmental Film Festival, talks about her Oscar-winning short, The Elephant Whisperers, the state of documentary filmmaking in the country, the rise of environment documentaries as a subgenre, and the impact of India's stunning performance at the 2023 Oscars

- Ananya Ghosh

2023 has indeed been a watershed year for Indian cinema. Not only has Bollywood got its groove back with three blockbuster hits in the form of Jawan, Pathaan, and Gadar 2, but the year has also unequivocally proved that Indian cinema is beyond Bollywood and fiction filmmaking with India picking up two Oscars at the 95th Academy Award.

Netflix's The Elephant Whisperer, directed by debutante filmmaker, Kartiki Gonsalves, won the Best Documentary Short Subject creating history as the first Indian film to win an Oscar in the category. The worldwide success of her 42-min heart-warming and often heartbreaking film that brings to fore the rising human-animal conflict in southern ghats with civilisation constantly coming in the way of migrating elephants causing intermittent tragedies, along with Shaunak Sen's moving documentary film on the dying black kites of Delhi, All That Breathes that had also bagged an Oscar nomination has put Indian documentary filmmaking and environment documentaries under sharp focus.

We caught up with Gonsalves as she gears up for her Jury duty for the 2023 edition of All Living Things Environmental Film Festival (ALT EFF) scheduled between. Dec 1st and Dec 10 with in-person and virtual screening across India. Talking about the importance of the festival that started in 2020 with the focus on using cinema as a medium to engage in conversation around subjects of nature, environment and climate change, the newly-minted Oscar winner says: "A festival like ALT EFF gives filmmakers a space to openly share their voices to the world and be unafraid to share. it - not all stories are positive and it is important to see both sides of the coin."