AT THE STAIRS

According to Hindu tradition, when a husband dies, the wife breaks her bangles and exchanges her colourful sari for a white one. Many of them end up in Banares, the city of widows and Radha followers.

Do women have an identity beyond the men in their lives? The answer is not simply ‘yes’ in this part of the world where Hindu widows are forced to live a life of abstinence for the sake of tradition. Quietly capturing their loneliness and grief, this documentary deftly plays on the power of silence.