Storyline

The 17-minute film is directed by internationally acclaimed filmmaker Haobam Paban Kumar and produced by Wide Angle, an Imphal-based NGO working for women and child rights with the support of the European Union. Many children in Manipur have been either orphaned or are living with a single parent after having lost them to violence or to HIV/AIDS. The film highlights the lives of the children, who get very little assistance from government-sponsored orphanages. The findings of a survey by the NGO culminated in the documentary, which seeks to draw attention of the NGOs, government authorities and National Commission for Child Rights to the condition of the children in the state. The film opens with a scene on the killing of pregnant Th. Rabina Devi of Imphal West in a controversial shootout in the heart of Imphal city in broad daylight and her minor son, Russel, looking at his mother. It portrays the condition of children in orphanages, government schools, as child soldiers, manual labourers at stone quarries and at automobile workshops. The film reveals that Manipur has the highest number of school dropouts in the country and that 65 per cent and 12 primary government schools have only one teacher. There are no toilets and drinking water facilities at many of the government schools. Conversion of government schools into security barracks and massive deployment of both state and central forces in the state also form the subject of the documentary.

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