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The Golden Thread

Directed by Nishtha Jain
India
2022
86 mins

Synopsis

With her doting camera observing diligently and a rich, layered sound design, Nishtha Jain documents the sunset days of one of the last standing jute mills in West Bengal.

Built in the jute boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, West Bengal’s remaining mills are at last losing out to rapid industrialisation. This textured, meditative documentary, which received a special jury mention at the 2023 DOXA Documentary Film Festival, gives space to the labour and the hopes of the workers who produce the coarse fibre as they fight for minimum wage. The film’s sound design is tuned to every little element – the fibre dust hanging in the air; the jute being swept and pressed into shapes. The Golden Thread lovingly, carefully journeys from the mills to the fields where jute is stacked, to the children of jute workers dreaming of elsewhere.

Limited seats are available for patrons requiring access for wheelchairs, low vision and hearing loop. Please contact our ticketing team directly on 1300 733 733 or tickets@sff.org.au to complete your booking.

“Somewhat of a miracle… an homage to the cinematographic image itself, an homage to the primal ability of the cinematographic image to show, to demonstrate.”
Jurij Meden, curator at the Austrian Film Museum

Special Guests

Nishtha Jain
Director, Screenwriter

Nishtha Jain is an Indian film director and producer best known for her documentaries Gulabi Gang (2012), The Golden Thread (2022), and Lakshmi and Me (2007). Her eleventh and most recent film, Farming the Revolution (2024), won the Best International Documentary Prize at Hot Docs.

Tickets

Sun 8 June 2025, 1pm
Event Cinemas George Street - Cinema 3
WheelchairSubtitledAssisted Listening
  • Program Strand
    Focus on Nishtha Jain
  • Original Title
    PAAT KATHA
  • Year
    2022
  • Classification
    Unclassified 15+
  • Country
    India, UK, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Norway, Netherlands
  • Language
    In Hindi and Bengali with English subtitles
  • Director
    Nishtha Jain
  • Producer
    Nishtha Jain, Morana Komljenovic, Irena Taskovski
  • Screenwriter
    Nishtha Jain, Deborah Matzner
  • Cinematographer
    Rakesh Haridas
  • Editor
    Alex Goekjian, Nishtha Jain
  • Genre
    Documentary, Indian Subcontinent, Retrospective, Women Directors, Environment
  • Company Credits
    Festival Contact: Nishtha Jain

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