Nocturnes

In the forests of the Eastern Himalayas, two curious observers explore a nocturnal world of moths, illuminating a fragile ecosystem on the India–Bhutan border. Immersive and contemplative, the film invites us to attend to hidden connections within the natural world.

Anupama Srinivasan: ‘The film is in a way, at least in parts, of us observing them observing the moths. So it is about the precision and focus and attention we give to looking. That is also what we want — for the audience to look at the film with more attention than one would normally do. The other aspect was the repetition. The rigour of science, you know, where they have to put up the screen every night. So for us, we wanted to represent that rigour but in an interesting way so that it does not become boring for the audience. So, every moth-screen night has a little story around it, very gently told. One night, nothing happens, no moths come, and they just keep waiting and have to pack up and go.’

Anirban Dutta: ‘Our motivation was also to challenge the anthropocentric gaze, where human beings are seen as the most superior things. When we went to that place, we saw ourselves as very little. As you see in the film, the human knowledge and the great science we know of — when the scientists put up the moth-screen, many nights they fail. One of them says that we put up this screen thinking that the moths will come and that this place is humanised. It will take us decades to understand how the moths look. That contextualises how little we know. One also needs to understand that any science that happens is part of a process first. There is rigour, and our film is a love letter to this process of science.’

— Excerpted and adapted from Santanu Das, ‘Nocturnes Directors Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan Interview on the Only Indian Documentary at Sundance 2024’, Hindustan Times, 26 January 2024