Insides and Outsides is a documentary film project, which captures a timeline from the end of 2019, when the CAA/NRC protests were at their peak, till 2022 when the pandemic had upturned everyone's personal life. In an increasingly hostile environment of escalating violence, Arbab explores what it is like being a Muslim in India. The film ebbs and flows between looking outside, where a constant stream of hate erupts, and inside, where Arbab's parents renegotiate their place in the country with changing times.
The film majorly has three characters, Arbab's mother and father in front of the camera and him behind. The film briefly begins in Ahmedabad as it covers the protests taking place in Bapunagar, then suddenly halts with the pandemic. It takes an interior turn as the lockdown (due to COVID-19) is imposed, and Arbab has to move back home with his parents, where he explores his own identity through them. With the background of the pandemic, he explores what anxieties he feels and what is felt by his parents collectively, and finding links between both.
Documentary, Film, Identity, Insides and Outsides, Muslim
