In Kallol Mukherjee’s Herland, a documentary set in rural Rajasthan, the seemingly straightforward demand for women’s access to work gradually becomes a larger struggle for dignity, agency and the right to occupy public space. Following a woman named Bhagyashree and others as they navigate the bureaucratic obstacles surrounding MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), the director observes how courage can emerge through small, tentative acts of resistance. Rather than framing their struggle through easy binaries, Herland pays attention to the social structures and everyday expectations that shape the women’s lives while allowing their growing sense of solidarity to emerge organically.

In this interview, Mukherjee discusses the making of Herland, the ethical considerations of documentary filmmaking and how his encounters with the women at its center shaped his understanding of resistance, dignity and the struggle for autonomy.

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Dipankar Sarkar: Your short documentary Mic Drop (2024) explores a rapper’s struggle to gain recognition in the Bundelkhand region despite financial hurdles, while your first feature-length documentary, Herland, follows women in a village in Rajasthan fighting for their right to work. What draws you to these stories, and what are you looking for when you enter such worlds as a filmmaker?

Kallol Mukherjee: Growing up as a migrant in rented houses across Jabalpur, after being born in a village near Tarakeswar in Hooghly, Bengal, I experienced a constant sense of displacement. My father had a transferable job, and that movement left me feeling, from a very young age, that I never quite belonged. This personal sense of displacement, combined with growing up with parents who believed deeply in socialism and constitutional equality, made me acutely sensitive to the invisible structures of caste, gender, class, land, money and power that dictate who gets heard. India is full of profound contradictions, with millions still forced to negotiate their basic constitutional rights. I keep returning to communities squeezed by systems much larger than themselves. When I enter these worlds, I look for the precise, pivotal moment when an individual encounters an overwhelming power structure and makes the decisive choice to resist.

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DS: Herland begins with the women’s struggle to access employment under MGNREGA but gradually becomes a film about dignity, agency and the right to occupy public space. When did you realize that Herland was becoming something larger than a story about access to employment?

KM: The project originally grew out of the Ibtada Foundation’s MGNREGA entitlement program, and the initial idea was closer to a testimonial or corporate documentary showcasing its welfare work. However, I realized that the film was expanding into something much bigger as we encountered the intense, direct resistance of village patriarchy. The true turning point came when the women crossed invisible boundaries to enter the panchayat, a space where they were not expected to be. When the panchayat pradhan (village head) dismissed and insulted them, calling them illiterate, they refused to turn back. Standing their ground and confronting direct opposition made it clear that they had crossed a line and transformed the narrative from a straightforward story about access to employment into a fight for identity and dignity.

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DS: What made you realize that Bhagyashree’s journey had the potential to become one of the film’s emotional centers?

KM: When I began visiting the villages where the NGO operated, I met Bhagyashree at one of its meetings. I initially selected a broader group of 10 to 12 women, eventually narrowing it down to six based on their backgrounds, narrative potential and comfort in front of the camera. As filming progressed, Bhagyashree’s journey naturally began to stand out because her story had an undeniable emotional and dramatic trajectory that demanded our attention. I was particularly drawn to her distinctive personality. She is shy and tends to overthink, yet she is brave and genuinely wants to take action. As she often needed external support and motivation, her story unfolded organically through her conversations and relationship with Anita.

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DS: Anita from the Ibtada Foundation becomes an important presence in Bhagyashree’s journey. What interested you about their relationship, and what did you discover about the nature of support and solidarity through their interactions?

KM: Anita, a woman working with the NGO, became an important presence whom I chose to follow because I wanted to introduce another perspective into the film. Her interactions with Bhagyashree offered an essential window into the unfolding narrative. Since Bhagyashree was naturally shy and needed external support and encouragement, her relationship with Anita became an organic means of observing her personal journey and inner transformation.

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DS: You resist portraying the men around these women as uniformly oppressive. Some reinforce existing structures while others support their wives. Why was it important for you to retain these shades of complexity?

KM: I believe people’s behavior is shaped by the situations they find themselves in and, subsequently, by how much exposure they have to the wider world. When your worldview is restricted to the confines of a village, it can be difficult to understand or absorb the progressive realities of life beyond it. Patriarchy, therefore, is neither a monolith nor a cartoonish, uniform villain. It is an entrenched structure, but its manifestations vary from man to man, depending on individual exposure and circumstances. If you look closely at village life, patriarchy is often abstract and stitched together through immediate needs, control and fear of disruption. Some men aggressively reinforce these structures because their identities and social standing are tied to maintaining dominance. Others, confronted with their wives’ resilience or subtle shifts in circumstance, find room to support or understand them. By capturing these complexities, I wanted to avoid reducing the men to caricatures.

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DS: You were filming women who had limited experience with cameras and were navigating deeply personal and socially sensitive circumstances. Were there moments when you chose not to film something because you felt the camera’s presence would compromise their dignity or alter the situation?

KM: There were several moments when we were right in the thick of things but consciously chose not to roll the camera. Even when we did film, we sometimes decided to leave the footage out of the final cut. When making an observational documentary and living intimately with your subjects, you have to constantly question the ethics of the camera’s presence in private, vulnerable spaces. For instance, you don’t see Bhagyashree crying in the film, but I know for a fact that she broke down multiple times. We consciously chose not to film those moments. Preserving her dignity and protecting the safety of that human relationship always had to take precedence over capturing a raw emotional moment for the screen.

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DS: How did filmmaker Nidhi Saxena come on board as a producer, and how did her collaboration shape the film?

KM: It actually happened the other way around from what people might expect. Nidhi Saxena and her partner, Ajender Chawla, came on board to produce the film first, and then they found me. Both of them are filmmakers themselves, and we spent a tremendous amount of time discussing and debating the narrative structure. Ajender is also a social worker who knows the region intimately, and he brought a wealth of local knowledge, demographic insights and cultural context to the project. Coming from that region, they were able to convey four to five months’ worth of deep contextual understanding to us in a matter of days. This was invaluable in shaping how we entered these communities.

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DS: The camera often stays close enough to register hesitation, discomfort or amusement while still allowing the surrounding social environment to remain visible. How did you and cinematographer Yash Dubey determine when to move closer and when to hold back?

KM: Yash Dubey is a remarkably experienced director of photography, and we had previously worked together on my short documentary Mic Drop, which was also observational. He is an exceptional observer of human behavior who can read a room and anticipate a character’s emotional state before it surfaces. Since we’ve worked together before and share a close friendship, we have a shorthand that allows us to communicate without words. Our preparation centered on observing from a distance with long telephoto lenses, allowing Yash to achieve the rare feat of remaining virtually invisible while being physically present.

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DS: There is a popular notion that documentaries are made and structured in the editing room. How much of the narrative was discovered during editing, and how much had you already envisioned while filming?

KM: There’s a lot of truth to the idea that a documentary is truly written in the editing room, especially when you’re constantly balancing the narrative arc against dwindling production funds while filming. I collaborated on the edit with Sanchay Bose, who has a wonderfully distinct, clear-eyed way of looking at reality and raw footage. When I returned from the shoot, I shared my initial vision for the narrative with him, and we watched the rushes together. Sanchay then took over and assembled the first cut. He is ruthlessly objective about the footage. As a filmmaker who has poured blood, sweat and tears into capturing a particular shot, it can feel like a betrayal when that shot is removed. But you need an editor who is strong enough to discard your favorite moments to keep the story moving forward and strip away the director’s inherent bias.

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DS: Herland is partly about women being spoken for by husbands, officials and social structures, and gradually finding their own voices. What do you hope audiences take away from their journey?

KM: I hope audiences come away with a profound realization about liberation. These women did not need to be rescued by someone else, nor did they need anyone to protect them, represent them or give them permission. Instead, I want viewers to witness them discovering the power they already possessed. True freedom is not a gift granted by a system or a savior. It is the realization that you were always entitled to exist, speak and claim your space on your own terms.

Herland premiered at the Moscow International Documentary Film Festival DOKer and will screen at the DokuBaku International Documentary Film Festival in Azerbaijan.

Dipankar Sarkar (@Dipankar_Tezpur) is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic based in India. As a freelancer, he regularly contributes to various Indian publications on cinema-related topics.

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