IN THE LIGHT OF DARKNESS
Director Koel Sen
Genre Documentary
Location India
Language English, Hindi, Bengali
Running time 90 minutes
Stage of production in production
Country of production France, India, Germany
Year 2027
LOGLINE
Accused of plotting to assassinate India’s Prime Minister, political activist Shoma is imprisoned for six years without trial. Through letters to her incarcerated mother, her filmmaker daughter Koel pieces together a family history of resistance, revealing the personal cost of dissent in contemporary India.
SYNOPSIS
In the Light of Darkness unfolds through letters written by Koel, a 30-year-old documentary filmmaker, to her 60-year old activist mother in prison, Shoma. Through these personal letters she traces her own family history rooted in politics and untold family stories, uncovering the personal cost of revolution and the enduring strength of her parents’ love in the face of danger, sacrifice, and the political turmoil that defined their generation. Addressed directly to you, Koel’s letters to her mother form the film’s emotional spine: an archive of love, survival, and political inheritance.
The film opens with Koel’s first letter, written in shock. Koel recounts the raid on her childhood home and the sudden collapse of ordinary life. In court, a Public Prosecutor claims, ‘a Rajiv Gandhi-like assassination’ was being plotted in that house—her house. Koel struggles to comprehend how a space of books, warm-meals, and childhood routines is transformed into a crime scene. Koel documents her first journey to Pune to meet her mother in Police custody, confronting the shock of separation formalized by walls, guards, and time limits.
As the letters continue, the film moves between past and present—between dreams, memories, and the daily realities of imprisonment. Koel recalls growing up as the daughter of an activist, a life shaped by long absences, going for demonstrations, and a constant fear of losing her mother. Each letter encapsulated Koel’s many worlds – of that of prison logistics of survival: medicines, money orders; her personal life in Mumbai and a failing relationship; news about her mother’s case and court updates and public campaigns that place her private grief within a larger collective resistance. While her words remain hopeful, Koel herself begins to unravel, slipping into chronic depression and anxiety.
When the COVID-19 lockdown is announced, communication from prison abruptly stops. News dries up. Letters go unanswered. Visits are suspended. The film enters a long, unsettling silence mirroring both personal isolation and a nation under confinement. This pause breaks with a phone call—her mother’s voice heard for the first time—followed by video calls that restore her presence to the present tense.
On 12 April 2024, after six years, Koel’s mother was released on bail. Koel captures the moment on her phone—trembling, imperfect, real. The film ends with a quiet epilogue of reunion and fragile normalcy, while reminding us that the struggle continues, and many others like her mother still remain imprisoned.
DIRECTOR — Koel Sen
Koel Sen is a filmmaker, artist and producer from India who is currently an artist-in-residence at the Halle14 in Leipzig, where she is working on her current documentary project. In her film work Koel combines film-footage (original and found), personal archives, text, still images and new media to explore collective memory, marginalised histories, and women’s role in political movements in India. She was recently selected at IDFAcademy 2025. A Berlinale Talent (2023), Koel developed In the Light of Darkness at the Doc Station. She was awarded the ‘maecenia’ Grant for women artists in Frankfurt (2023). Koel has also presented her project at the DOK Leipzig (2022) and has also been an artist-in-residence at the ADKDW, Cologne (2022). An alumna of the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII) and La FÉMIS, Paris, Koel’s films have screened globally at film-festivals and art platforms. Her shortdocumentary Bahava won the Emerging Talent Award at IAWRT Philippines and screened at the Grenoble Indian Film Festival (2021). Her short fiction Valay premiered at IDSFFK, Kerala (2019).