Land of my dreams: a film by Nausheen Khan South Asian Stories project

In 2019, the Indian government enacted the Citizenship Amendment Act, which overtly discriminates against Muslims. Viewing this as discriminatory, intergenerational, multifaith women gathered in Shaheen Bagh, a Muslim neighborhood in Delhi to form a non-violent sit-in that grew into a nationwide movement.

Land of my dreams follows the stories of these women who sustained a peaceful pro-democracy movement for more than a hundred days, galvanising resistance across the country. The film recounts how they weathered institutionalised and societal repression to redefine nationalism and provide a precedent for a new form of public dissent in modern India.

Drawing on her identity as a Muslim woman, the filmmaker questions contemporary notions of belonging, patriotism, and identity in India by examining shared human responses to exclusion, polarisation, and repression.

Nausheen Khan is an independent filmmaker based in India, working on gender perspectives amid conflict and political unrest in contemporary times. Land of my dreams is her first self-financed feature-length documentary film. It won Best Long Documentary at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala in 2023, and the Citizens' Prize at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, also in 2023.