Catalog

On the day of the Gangaur festival in Kolkata, a 10-year-old empathic boy is overlooked by his narcissistic family — forced into household duties while silently enduring the heartbreak of being forgotten on his own birthday.

Manu is a 10-year-old boy with a gift most adults no longer recognize — deep emotional sensitivity. In his Kolkata household, filled with the routines of commerce, family obligations, and tradition, Manu’s presence is overlooked. It’s the day of Gangaur, a festival honoring the divine feminine — a day of celebration and prayer. But for Manu, it’s also his birthday.    

No one notices.

While the household buzzes with festival chores and social obligations, Manu is treated like a servant — assigned tasks, expected to keep quiet, and denied the most basic acknowledgment of his inner world. In a family where everything from relationships to rituals is filtered through the lens of logic, appearances, and money, Manu’s intuitive nature becomes a threat.

He is not loud. He doesn’t rebel. He observes.

But within, a silent resistance grows. As the day unfolds, Manu’s inner world comes alive. He begins to witness — not just the dysfunction around him, but the deep emotional disconnection beneath it. The film unfolds in textures, light, sound, and gesture. It’s not driven by plot, but by perception — a cinematic experience shaped by how a sensitive child feels the world.

Set in the 1990s, Manu becomes a memory-scape — a living portrait of emotional neglect, ancestral repetition, and quiet inner rebellion. The film is an offering to all children whose truth was dismissed in favor of performance. It holds up a mirror to families that appear functional but are built on emotional erasure.

Through a non-linear, poetic rhythm — shaped more by breath than dialogue — Manu reveals how a child becomes a keeper of emotional truth in a world addicted to noise.