Chakwa or How I Learnt to Stop Worrying about the Slum

This film is an attempt to present the living realities of people who are stuck in three slums of Mumbai: Shramjeevi Nagar, a legal slum, where people are waiting to be rehabilitated; Lallubhai Compound where people have been rehabilitated; and Transit Camp, which is a place in between the slum and the rehabilitated building. The film shows how the three places are as bad as each other and there is no rehabilitation for the poor.
While making the film, we realized fully the implications of the class positions that we occupied. We faced the difficulty of representing lives that we could never fully understand. We have tried to include this in our film as well to present an honest picture of what we could and couldn’t do. This is a film about people who are consigned to be poor made by people who are privileged enough to be allowed to make films on them.

Directors

Chakwa or How I Learnt to Stop Worrying about the Slum