
WARM SHADOWS
15 minutes | Punjabi, Hindi with English subtitles | 2024
Aakash Chhabra
Weaving personal family archives, reenacted rituals and stories of Priya's girlhood, that Raag grew up listening to as bedtime fables, Warm Shadows is about a secret between a mother and a son that must be kept hidden, despite the yearning to break free.
Hamburg International Queer Film Festival
Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Festival
Scottish Queer International Film Festival
Seoul Pride International Film Festival
Aakash Chhabra is a writer and director based in Panipat, India. He is an alumnus of the Red Sea Director's Program 2025, Chanel X BIFF Asian Film Academy 2024 - Motion Picture Association Award, Busan Asian Film School (AFiS) 2022 - Best Project Award, Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute 2020 and Locarno Documentary Summer School 2019. His shorts have screened at festivals in Busan, Winterthur, Poitiers, Tehran, Kerala, Oberhausen and Dharamsala. His debut short Mintgumri (2021) was nominated for the FCG Critics' Choice Awards 2022 while his short documentary A Winters's Elegy (2022) featured on the Sight and Sound Magazine's list of Best Video Essays 2022. Errands (2024) was produced by the Busan International Film Festival while Warm Shadows (2025) will premiere later this year on Nowness.
He is presently working on his feature-length debut I'll Smile in September, which was developed at the Torino Film Lab - Red Sea Lodge 2024, Autumn Meeting 2024 and Produire au Sud Nantes 2022. It has participated in the Asian Project Market 2023, NFDC Film Bazaar 2024, QCinema Project Market 2024 and Red Sea Souk 2024.
Cast: Sheeba Chadha, Lakshvir Saran, Priya Chhabra, Anumita Jain
Screenwriter, Director: Aakash Chhabra
Producers: Sanjay Gulati, Neeraj Pandey, Ridhima Mehra, Tulika Srivastava
Co-Producers: Fran Borgia, Snigdha Sharma, Thanikachalam SA, Mahima Chhabra
Executive Producers: Singdha Sharma, Tanya Negi
Cinematographer: Vignesh S.
Editors: Vedant, Aakash Chhabra
Sound Recordist: Sethu Venugopal
Sound Designers: Diksha Mishra, Sethu Venugopal
Production Designer: Akshay Varshney, Suhasini Sharma