The Escape

I shot "The Escape" in 2006, as a student at the New York Film Academy in Paris. The six week course taught us how to direct good films. This film features actors who are not Nepali--because all the Nepalis I knew where working, or  unable to take a day off to shoot a student film. I am grateful to the actors of different nationalities who did show up to be in my low-budget production! I hope viewers will see this film for what it is: a homage to cinema, and a homage to the people who suffered through, and survived, the civil conflict in Nepal.

The film is inspired by a story told to me by a schoolteacher from Mugu, who was living in an internally displaced camp in Kohalpur, Nepalgunj, in 2004. I visited the camp as part of a team of researchers hired by UNDP to find out about the state of justice during the conflict. Feeling like INGO reports often did not do justice to people's stories, I was compelled to shoot this film two years afterwards. I hope this small cinematic attempt will ensure that people don't forget what happened during the conflict.