My Mangrove Mother

Directed & Produced by: Ipshita Bhattacharyya

Stage:
- Production
Location:
- India
Updated: April 5, 2026
Project Type:
- Feature
Project Style:
- Narrative/Doc Mix,
- Observational
Theme Subject:
- Environment,
- Gender,
- Indigenous

Logline

Amidst Sundarbans’ climate crisis, Madhumita restores a fragile mangrove forest, while her daughter Soma comes of age, inheriting a legacy of care and understanding what it means to be rooted.

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Synopsis

Along the shores of Sundarban, where land and sea constantly redraw their boundaries, 13-year-old Soma grows up on the frontline of climate change. Here cyclones, floods and rising seas are not distant events but part of her everyday life. Each year, embankments collapse and homes disappear, leaving families in constant uncertainty.

Livelihood is scarce and like many, her father risks his life on perilous fishing trips into the Bay of Bengal. Her mother, Madhumita runs

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Livelihood is scarce and like many, her father risks his life on perilous fishing trips into the Bay of Bengal. Her mother, Madhumita runs the household while working with a local NGO to support her family, often at the cost of time with her children. Madhumita's days are increasingly consumed restoring the island’s dwindling mangrove cover. She believes these forests will one day protect their village from floods and erosions. But the work is slow and intergenerational and she knows the forest's true resilience may not reveal itself within her own lifetime.

Nature has taught Madhumita to observe and adapt. One day she will have no choice but leave the village and she wants to prepare for that eventuality.

But Soma has a different dream. One of not leaving, of holding on to her childhood, continuing to stay in the village she calls home. But for how long?

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Background

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Across Southeast Asia, coastal communities are living on the frontlines of climate change, where rising seas, extreme weather and uncertain livelihoods are reshaping everyday life. The Sundarbans, the world’s largest contiguous mangrove ecosystem, lies within this shifting landscape, its survival closely tied to the future of not just the people who depend on it but also its vibrant biodiversity. Acting as a natural buffer, this delta holds both protection and vulnerability equally.

The Indian Sundarbans are often remembered only in moments of catastrophe. Headlines briefly capture the devastation of cyclones and floods, only to soon move on. Yet for the 4.5 million people living here, climate change is not an event. It is a continuous, lived reality shaped by rapid erosion, saline intrusion and the gradual loss of land and livelihood. This slow ongoing loss rarely finds space in dominant narratives, which tend to prioritise spectacle over continuity.

The island village of Bura Burir Tat is surrounded on three sides by the Bay of Bengal and on one side by a swelling river. On one side the coast is eroding rapidly while on the other, sand accretion is reshaping the shoreline. Here, environmental change is inseparable from economic uncertainty. With declining forest resources and damaged agricultural land, livelihoods have become increasingly unstable. Many men migrate to cities in search of work or undertake high-risk occupations such as deep-sea fishing in the Bay of Bengal. Survival is dependent on the tides, weather and chance, all of which are becoming increasingly unpredictable with rapid climate change. Most families whose homes are closer to the island’s edge, are trying to relocate before they lose everything to the sea.

Responses to climate change in these regions often remain reactive. Government and institutional efforts tend to focus on disaster relief, arriving after damage is already done. While mangrove plantations are widely promoted as natural barriers against storms, many such interventions fail due to poor planning, lack of ecological understanding and limited community involvement. This raises important questions about the gap between policy and practice and the need to centre lived realities in shaping long-term responses.

Against this backdrop, community-led efforts begin to emerge. Mangrove restoration, when practiced with attention to species, soil and seasonal rhythms, becomes more than an environmental intervention. It becomes a long-term commitment, one that requires patience, collective effort and an acceptance that results may only be visible across generations. In this way, climate action begins to move at a different pace, asking for a rethinking of time, value and responsibility. Through this work, a different inheritance begins to take shape, one that carries both the memory of loss and the practice of care. While rooted in the Sundarbans, this reflects a wider reality across coastal South East Asia, where communities facing similar crises may find resonance in these slow, care-driven responses to change.

Women remain at the centre of this everyday survival. They manage households, maintain social networks and adapt to changing environmental conditions, often with limited access to resources or decision-making power. Their invisible labour forms a critical but overlooked layer of climate resilience. Yet mainstream narratives continue to position them as passive victims, rather than recognising them as active agents who are re-shaping adaptation on the ground.

In Bura Burir Tat, a women-led shift is quietly taking root. One grounded in care. Through small, persistent acts, women are beginning to reimagine their relationship with the land, revealing how climate anxiety can transform over time into climate care. For the younger generation growing up within this uncertainty, these acts can begin to shape new ways of seeing and belonging.

At a time when global climate discourse often searches for large-scale solutions, these everyday practices offer something more intimate. They remind us that resilience is not only built through intervention, but through relationships between people, land and time. And through the tender, quiet and enduring act of care. And yet, what it can hold and for how long, remains unknown.

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Participants

Somashree Bag

Primary Participant

Participant

Somashree Bag

Primary Participant

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Madhumita Bag

Soma's Mother, Secondary Participant

Participant

Madhumita Bag

Soma's Mother, Secondary Participant

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Shivshankar Bag

Soma's Father, Tertiary Participant

Participant

Shivshankar Bag

Soma's Father, Tertiary Participant

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Style & Tone

The cinematic language of the film is verité in nature, blending intimate observational filming with stylised compositions and immersive interactions between the characters. The narrative unfolds organically through everyday conversations and storytelling, providing nuanced insights into their daily lives. Through verité scenes, the film offers a self-reflective window into the family dynamics and how they navigate differences of opinion, yet continue to hold their

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Through a metaphorical thread, the film weaves the outer biodiversity-rich landscape into the inner worlds of its characters. Lush, meditative frames capture the Sundarbans’ natural rhythm: mangrove roots breathing at low tide, mudskippers and crabs skittering across mudflats, tidal patterns shaping daily life. Aerial images reveal the fragile yet expansive terrain, reinforcing both its beauty and precarity.

Sound plays a central role in shaping the sensory experience of the film. The soundscape shifts with time and season. Dense birdcalls at dawn, the stillness of humid afternoons, distant winds building before a storm and the constant, underlying presence of water. Silence is used as deliberately as sound, allowing emotional undercurrents to surface without explanation. Songs of the community add to the narrative ushering festivities and also grief.

The film moves between observation and interiority. While the camera remains close to the characters, there are moments where memory, imagination, and inherited knowledge enter the narrative. Oral folklore and local belief systems form a second layer within the film, offering insight into how communities have historically understood and negotiated their relationship with nature. These stories will be interpreted through subtle, hand-crafted animation, not as spectacle, but as fragments of memory and emotion, expanding the film’s language beyond the visible.

Alongside this, a subtle surreal layer enters the film through Soma’s inner world. Her dreams, desires and fears are not always expressed through words but through fleeting, sensory images. These moments draw from her imagination where she moves freely through shifting landscapes.

Time is treated as cyclical rather than linear. The structure follows seasonal shifts mirroring both ecological processes and emotional transitions. Repetition becomes a narrative device, allowing the viewer to feel the accumulation of loss, labour and care.

At its core, the camera remains patient and attentive. It does not intervene or direct, but stays with gestures, pauses, and small transitions. Meaning emerges by staying with the moment.

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Team

Ipshita Bhattacharyya

Director & Producer

Team

Ipshita Bhattacharyya

Director & Producer

We are all made of each other and even in our individualism we are all connected. It is this dynamic interlinking of human experiences that inspires Ipshita to tell stories. Working as an independent filmmaker, Ipshita explores storytelling through the intricate facets of nature, culture and conservation. With a background in television production, she worked extensively as a director / producer on several travel documentaries, from exotic landscapes to remote villages from 2005 till 2017. As the Creative Director with NDTV network Ipshita worked on conceptualising and directing content for branded social campaigns which were important tools for raising public awareness on social issues and brought experts, celebrities, bureaucrats, political leaders and the public onto a shared platform. In 2017, Ipshita founded a filmmaking collective Reel Nomads (a team of freelance artists) that works towards crafting compassionate stories, which trigger inspiration and create dialogue. Her work is purpose led and through her collective she brings in an inherent understanding of grassroots India and its cultural, social and environmental challenges. In the past 7 years, her work has led to documentary projects with many social development organisations and international broadcasting platforms, creating films on environment, climate change, gender, social justice and culture. Her passion is to swim against the tide and go deeper into forging real bonds with the community, capturing intimate emotions and serve the common goal of leaving this world a little better than before.

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Nitin Kumar

Cinematographer

Team

Nitin Kumar

Cinematographer

With over 10 years of experience, Nitin specialises in filming human-centred narratives, travel and wildlife documentaries, working across a variety of formats and styles of cinema. His work is deeply rooted in authenticity and he is passionate about exploring the universal language of cinema, telling stories that resonate with a wide variety of audiences. His curiosity moves him to constantly experiment with the visual language and the world of cinema is his constant inspiration. As the director of photographer for My Mangrove Mother, Nitin immerses himself in the lives of the characters and their seductive yet fragile world.

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Niladri Bhattacharji

Editor

Team

Niladri Bhattacharji

Editor

With over a decade of experience in the advertising business, storytelling is Niladri’s forte. In 2015, Niladri decided to leave the world of advertising agencies and began his foray into filmmaking, In the past 10 years, he has worked on a variety of formats exploring the nuances of storytelling for different audiences and platforms.
From creating trailers with Hollywood based post production agencies to delivering short docs for not for profit orgs, from long fiction broadcasts on OTT / TV platforms to independent documentaries, Niladri has always loved to push the boundaries of his imagination. He understands the demands of a constantly evolving cinematic world and as a core member of My Mangrove Mother, he embraces the challenges and the adventure both on the edit table and on location.

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Budget

This section includes information about this project.

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Grants & Awards

November 2025 Official Selection at Green Stories Pitch Lab
November 2025 Official Selection at Himalayan Story Lab 2025-26 Cohort
December2025 Letter of Intent from Taskovski Films Ltd
March 2026 Artist Residency at Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts

Stills

Our Ask

Since 2010, repeated cyclones and intensifying storms have made the Indian Sundarbans one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. Entire communities are facing slow displacement and children are growing up with an uncertain sense of home, safety, and identity. Climate change here is not a future threat. It shapes everyday life.

There is a growing global audience searching for climate stories that move beyond catastrophe and despair. Stories that acknowledge fear, but also offer solutions toward hope, agency, and care. This film is rooted in that need.

This story must be told now because it unfolds through time; seasons, relationships and a pivotal moment in a young girl’s life. Our primary participant is on the threshold of adolescence, a transition that mirrors the fragility and transformation of the land she calls home. We cannot recreate or postpone this moment.

Filming must continue in 2026 so that we can spend a year with her, her family, her community and the landscape, allowing the story to emerge organically. We have already done one schedule of filming in March 2026. The next crucial phase for which we are trying to raise fund is the filming through the monsoon months. Missing this window would mean losing the integrity of the story itself.

Of the total project budget we are currently seeking funding for USD 30,000 to:

Film the monsoon production schedule in July / August 2026

This funding is crucial for the film to move from concept into lived reality and for us to capture the story with care, trust and continuity. Your support at this stage will directly shape the foundation of the film, enabling a process that is ethical, collaborative and deeply rooted in the community it portrays.

Supporting this film means investing in a story that speaks to one of the defining challenges of our time, told from a perspective that is often unheard. It is not a story of spectacle or disaster, but of patience, resilience and inheritance. It honours care that is practiced across generations in the face of uncertainty.

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My Mangrove Mother

Logline

Clips

Participants

Somashree Bag

Somashree Bag

Madhumita Bag

Madhumita Bag

Shivshankar Bag

Shivshankar Bag

Team

Ipshita Bhattacharyya

Ipshita Bhattacharyya

Nitin Kumar

Nitin Kumar

Niladri Bhattacharji

Niladri Bhattacharji

Budget

Grants & Awards

Stills

Our Ask