A Chronicle of the Lost – Films

Soumya Mukhopadhyay
India | 2026 | 25 min
World premiere
Language : Hindi
Subtitles : English, French

Based on the testimonies of former migrant workers, A Chronicle of the Lost retraces the journey of one of them, embodied by a fictional character wandering through the now-abandoned jute mills of Calcutta. The imaginary letters he sends to his wife, who remained in their village, weave a poignant elegy to a community destroyed by the rise of capitalism.

Along the banks of the Hooghly River, in Kolkata and its surroundings, the first global jute production industry developed under the influence of the English colonisers. For decades, recurring social crises kept capital away, leading to the closure of numerous mills and leaving thousands of migrant workers impoverished. Soumya Mukhopadhyay collected their testimonies, imagining a hybrid narrative in which a fictional character, embodying “their emotional truth,” sends letters to his wife who has remained in the village. A Chronicle of the Lost, oscillating between analogue and digital images – the former carrying the weight of history and repetition, the latter the relentless immediacy of the present – depicts the protagonist’s meanderings through the streets of the Indian megacity, haunted by the clamour of machines and past social struggles. At the heart of his purgatory flows the river, a silent observer, whose waters carry the fibre and memory of its industrial transformation before sweeping into oblivion the lives of those who formed its backbone.

Emmanuel Chicon

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