Project Detail

I Am Belmaya

Synopsis

In patriarchal Nepal, Belmaya, at 21, has given up on finding happiness. An uneducated Dalit, with an oppressive husband and baby daughter, she yearns for freedom. Rewind to 2006, when she was a rebellious teenager living in a girls’ home. Grabbing the chance to learn photography, she wanted to change her world. But the home locked away her camera.
I Am Belmaya follows her transformational journey from 2014 as she once again picks up the camera, this time to train as a documentary filmmaker. But are her husband and community ready for this? Struggling against violent opposition, Belmaya makes a personal film, Educate Our Daughters, which wins hearts and awards, taking her to places she never dreamed she would go.

Details

Year
2020
Type of project
Features
Running time
82 mins
Format
HD
Director
Sue Carpenter 1st Feature
Producer
Sue Carpenter, Christopher Hird
Executive Producer
Christopher Hird
Director of Photography
Manas Singh Suwal, Belmaya Nepali, Sue Carpenter, Laxcha Bantawa
Composer
Marie-Anne Fischer
Co-director
Belmaya Nepali
Film Images
©Sue Carpenter

Categories

Production Status

Production Company

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

A woman smiles during an interview Folk to Folk

Director: Saoirse Crean

Year: 2026

Led by renowned vocal coach Jennifer John, Folk to Folk follows a group of women in Liverpool who use traditional folk songs to build unexpected connections across cultures. As they learn and sing in Gaelic, Romansh, Boro and other languages, the sessions uncover shared themes that unite us. The songs rise like ghosts from the past, stirring memories, laughter and tears, and opening a safe space for the women to reflect together. “This project proves that music is a universal language. It allows us to feel, to be emotional, and when we do that together… that’s where the power lies” - Jennifer John

People drinking and socialising in a pub The Local

Director: Kim Hopkins

Year:

In an inner-city pub in Northern England, the lives of its regulars unfold through politics, love, loss and song, as a community holds on with quiet dignity in a world growing more divided and uncertain.

A blurry still of people in white vests Lost Souls Swimming in A Fish Bowl

Director: Aneek Chaudhuri

Year: 2026

Lost Souls, Swimming in a Fish Bowl is a silent documentary about the invisible territories of depression, isolation, memory, and the fragile act of continuing to live. There are people who move through the world every day while feeling as though they exist behind glass. They work, walk, eat, sleep, smile, and disappear into crowds—yet remain suspended within an interior world that no one else can enter. The film observes these fractured states without explanation, diagnosis, or spoken testimony. Instead, silence becomes the language of the film. Through faces, bodies, empty rooms, urban landscapes, found footage, archival fragments, photographs, gestures, objects, and moments of stillness, Lost Souls, Swimming in a Fish Bowl enters the psychological geography of people who feel trapped inside themselves. The fish bowl becomes both metaphor and physical space: transparent enough to see the world outside, yet impossible to escape.