Every year, when the National Film Awards are announced, the spotlight predictably lands on the feature film category. Social media erupts in debate over which star won, which filmmaker was snubbed, and what political undercurrents lie beneath the choices.

But if we shift our gaze just slightly, we’ll find another world, which is the non-feature section. It is here that filmmakers, often working with fewer resources and less recognition, are pushing the envelope of Indian cinema to a large extent.

This year’s winners remind us that storytelling need not be measured by box office numbers or celebrity presence. Sometimes, the most profound stories unfold in silence, in metaphors, and in the margins.

Soumyajit Ghosh Dastidar’s Flowering Man, which won Best Non-Feature Film, is one such revelation. On the surface, it is the story of a man suffocating under the weight of a suppressed queer identity, where the image of a flowering plant blooming inside his mouth transforms it into something larger. It becomes a metaphor for longing that can no longer be contained.

The drama finds an even deeper resonance through the man’s relationship with his daughter, who begins her own quiet journey towards understanding.

The film, which earlier won a Special Jury Award at IDSFFK 2024, lingers like a whispered confession, at once intimate and universal.

In contrast, Piyush Thakur’s The First Film is outwardly modest, yet brimming with cinematic assurance. Set in the 1960s, the short follows a teenage girl determined to break social norms by entering a movie theatre, which is an act forbidden to women in her village. Shot in stark black-and-white, it plays like a memory preserved in the folds of time.

Fragile, aching, yet timeless. It’s a film about the birth of cinema in the soul of a young girl, and about love and history, both remembered and invented.

Winning Best Direction and Best Music Direction, it affirms that Thakur is a filmmaker in full command of tone and texture.

Then there is Giddh, directed by Manish Saini, a film that finds its strength in moral unease. Anchored by Sanjay Mishra in one of his most quietly devastating performances, it asks what choices a person can make when survival itself becomes a moral crime.

The lines between necessity and culpability blur, and the viewer is left unsettled, questioning their own sense of right and wrong. It’s the kind of story that does not end with the credits; it follows us home, into our private reckonings. It has won the award for Best Short Film.

From Assam comes Shilpika Bordoloi’s Mau: The Spirit Dreams of Cheraw, a debut of striking originality. Bordoloi reimagines the bamboo dance of Mizoram not as performance but as ritual, conjuring the story of a mother’s spirit seeking peace after death in childbirth.

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The film is less narrative than invocation. It is a dance of memory, movement, and mourning. Winning Best Debut Film of a Director, it is both a personal triumph and a cultural reclamation.

Another Assamese filmmaker, Sanjib Parasar, along with Nilakshi Medi, won Best Biographical Film for Lentina Ao – A Light on the Eastern Horizon.

The documentary pays tribute to a woman who changed Nagaland in the 1950s through her work in healthcare and education.

Produced by NFDC, it is a reminder that cinema can preserve the legacies of those history often overlooks, ensuring that their contributions remain alive for generations to come.

And yet, for all their achievements, these films and more in the non-feature category risk being remembered only as footnotes.

The headlines rarely belong to them. But if we are serious about cinema, not just as entertainment, but as art, history, and human expression, then our gaze must widen

One hopes that in the years to come, our conversations will change, and these films will receive the space they deserve. Not in the shadows of winning a National Film Award, but standing in their own light.

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