Educate Our Daughters [Shorts Session 5]
Interweaving her own journey from being labelled ‘cow-dung brain’ by her teacher, to becoming a documentary filmmaker, with her dreams for her 4-year-old daughter’s education, a young low-caste Nepali woman explores the state of education for girls in Nepal.
Director
Belmaya is a first-time director, 25. Born in a hill village near Pokhara, Nepal, to a low-caste family, Belmaya has had very little formal education. Orphaned at the age of 9, she moved to a home in Pokhara and was introduced to photography aged 14. She participated in exhibitions in Nepal and London and her work was included in a book, My World, My View. At 19, she married and had a baby daughter, and spent years in poverty and domestic labour. In 2014, aged 21, she got the opportunity to train in documentary filmmaking. Educate Our Daughters is her graduation project and first short film. She has gone on to make a short film on boatwomen in Pokhara for Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Festivals/Awards
Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival, Pokhara International Mountain Film Festival, Nepal Human Rights International Film Festival