Rough Edges, with support from the Mariwala Health Initiative, has launched the Lost & Found in the Normal Documentary Film Fellowships 2026-27, 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.
The 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.
The Jury comprising acclaimed editor, filmmaker and curator Bina Paul; queer feminist activist, lawyer and arts therapist Ponni Arasu and Team Rough Edges, has awarded the following fellowships:
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.