Oneness is a new film by openly gay director Priyakanta Laishram that is about to hit the festival circuit. It’s based on the 2013 honor killing of a gay teenager in northeastern India. At the time, the death was deemed as a suicide and a case was never opened.
Laishram decided to make the film after connecting with one of the victim’s family members, who explained that her brother had belonged to a tribal group and was in a relationship with a Meitei boy before a hotel raid exposed the relationship.
“While he had support from his mother and sister, his father and older brother were very religious,” the 24-year-old filmmaker explains in a recent interview.
Related: WATCH: A young Indian man navigates hookups and heartbreak in rural Punjab
The teenager was forced to go through conversion therapy, which included being “re-baptized” and subjected to exorcisms and being submerged in water.
Oneness is the first LGBTQ-themed Manipuri film, but Laishram hopes it won’t be the last.
“While growing up in Manipur, we didn’t have any movies based on same-sex relationships,” he says. “Not just in Manipur, I can literally count on my fingers the number of [LGBTQ+ themed films] that have been made so far in our country.”
Watch.
ShiningSex
looks so good.
Scribe38
I hate religion.
I look forward to different queer stories being told. Lately I’ve been into BL shows. It’s nice seeing different minority groups expressing their queerness
Vellala
The Meitei ethnic/tribal group in the once remote corner of easternmost India, the majority of them even now practising a more tolerant peaceful form of Hinduism, were invaded by the Christian missionaries with their ‘fire, brimstone and hellfire” religion, the very concept of love and sexuality were turned on their heads for those tribal groups who adopted the new religion. Of course, folks of alternate sexuality among them are now in danger of “purification” from this new breed of homophobes in their community!