Ek Tha Gaon

Semla is a ghost village in the Himalayan foothills. Over years of dwindling prospects, the 50 families who once inhabited it have migrated to the city leaving only seven people behind. Leela, like her village, is old, resilient and long forgotten but, despite her struggles with loneliness and an ageing body, doesn’t want to leave for the city. Golu, on the other hand, is the only young person in Semla—desperate to escape to an urban life but without the means to do so. Dreaming of a different future, she roams her desolate birthplace. Ek Tha Gaon charts Leela and Golu’s emotional journey and changing relationship with the place they call home. Their situation is poignantly captured by the expression, “Villagers have a saying that the dead come back to visit the living. Now those of us who remain have only these ghosts for company.”