Sugarcane, Burning
At the cinema
Screens in Inheritance, Identity and Belonging Shorts Package.
See it at the cinema — tickets on the Cinemas page.
Synopsis
In the late nineteenth century, thousands of Indians crossed the ocean to colonial Natal in Southern Africa under indenture, carrying with them fragments of language, memory, and home. A young woman stands at the threshold of motherhood, suspended between what she has inherited and what she will pass on. Through matrilineal memory, she returns to the presence of her own mother - her touch, her language, her breath - and confronts the quiet ruptures left behind by migration and time. As past and present converge, Mira reflects on what survives: the names we are given, the words we struggle to keep, and the invisible weight carried forward across generations. Like the fields that must be burned before they can be sown again, loss and inheritance exist side by side. Sugarcane, Burning is a meditation on lineage, absence, and the enduring act of carrying what remains.
Director
Cast
Katishcka Kiara Chanderlal
Sivani Chinapann