Rough Edges, with support from the Mariwala Health Initiative, announces Lost & Found in the Normal Documentary Film Fellowships, to enable feminist artistic explorations, expressions, impressions and ruminations that foreground diverse and complex gendered experiences of mental health and narratives of those living with and navigating mental illness and distress, situating them at the very centre of their stories.
These Fellowships are open to women, trans, non-binary and queer filmmakers and artists marginalised on the basis of their caste, class, religion, sexual orientation, dis/ability, ethnicity, work, race, location and/ or region.
This Call for proposals is now closed. We thank everyone who has shared their ideas and proposals with us, for such an enthusiastic and overwhelming response. The proposals are currently being reviewed.
We expect to announce the selections by the end of April 2026.
For any queries, please write to info@roughedgesfoundation.org
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the jury
In addition to Team Rough Edges, two jurors are part of the proposal review and selection process.
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​​​​​​​fellowship notes
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The Fellowships are open to women, non-binary, trans and queer filmmakers from marginalised communities, resident in India, who may apply as individuals, teams or as collectives. Applicants are at liberty to propose and work with co-applicants, collaborators and team members, irrespective of how they identify.
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We aim to award six fellowships across short (between 15 and 40 minutes), mid (between 40 and 60 minutes) and feature length (between 60 and 75 minutes) films.
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The fellowship budgets would be a maximum of INR 2,50,000/- for a short documentary and INR 5,25,000/- for a feature length documentary, though budgets will vary across projects, based on their respective requirements.
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The films may be in any language - those that most intricately capture the specificities and depths of their subjects. In the interest of outreach, the final films will need to carry subtitles in English.
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We will commission projects developed in response to this Call or those in early stages of development. Projects that have a rough cut or are in need of post-production/ finishing funds only, will not be considered.
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We are not open to co-productions under these Fellowships.
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An Applicant/ team of Applicants can submit only one proposal for consideration under this Call.
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In the case of commissioning, Applicants commit to completing their films in a period of nine-ten months.
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These will be mentored fellowships, developed in dialogue with Rough Edges.
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Those who have submitted proposals for consideration for the Subtext Artistic Research Fellowships are eligible to apply for these Fellowships. Only one of the two fellowships will be awarded to a selected applicant/ team.
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submission terms
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Rough Edges is not bound to honour incomplete proposals, those that do not reach us or reach us after the submission deadline.
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Rough Edges will not be responsible should multiple proposals explore similar ideas. We may select any or none of them.
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Decisions on the selection of proposals, by the Fellowship Jury, comprising Rough Edges and two independent jurors, will be final.​​​
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Bina Paul has edited over fifty features and documentaries with prominent filmmakers like G Aravindan, MT Vasudevan Nair, John Abraham and PN Menon, among others. She has directed and produced documentary films that have screened worldwide. She has received two National Film Awards and numerous state awards. She has been the Artistic Director of the International Film Festival of Kerala and International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala for over two decades. Bina was the Vice Chairperson of the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy for five years. She is Vice President, NETPAC, and a founding member of the Women in Cinema Collective.
Ponni Arasu is a Tamil queer feminist activist, researcher, lawyer, translator, theatre artist and expressive arts therapist. An avid film watcher for many decades, she has
co-curated film festivals, including the Nigah QueerFest that took place in the late 2000s in Delhi. Ponni has worked on largely experimental and documentary films over the past few years, on-screen and off-screen, as herself, performer, researcher, interviewer, producer, etc. If from every Tongue it Drips; Tanty, the Divine Feminine and I (underway with director Nicola Cross); Punnarudhal and Mary & Manju are the films she has worked on.
Mariwala Health Initiative is a capacity-building, advocacy and grant-making organisation with a particular focus on making mental health accessible to marginalised persons and communities. It aligns with a rights-based, psychosocial approach that considers mental health concerns in the context of disability rights. It expands on the narrow medical understandings of mental health and illness and looks at these through a systemic lens, understanding oppression based on caste, gender, religion, region, ability and sexuality as major contributors to mental health distress. MHI encourages community-based interventions and actively promotes the deinstitutionalisation of mental health services.