A heartwarming celebration of community spirit and tradition, Hamari Ramleela follows the lives of ordinary people from diverse backgrounds who unite to stage an annual Ramleela performance, overcoming challenges and embracing the joy of togetherness amidst the festivities of Navratri.
JNICC, Embassy of India, Jakarta, is organizing a film screening of Hamari Ramleela, a documentary on India’s living folk tradition.
Date and Time: Sunday, 19 April 2026, at 11: 00 AM
Venue: Wayang Auditorium, Embassy of India, Jakarta, Gama Tower, 27th Floor, Jl. H.R. Rasuna Said, Kuningan, South Jakarta.
Register to attend here >>
This documentary offers a meaningful insight into India’s rich cultural heritage and the vibrant traditions that continue to thrive in contemporary society. It is a great opportunity to experience the depth of storytelling and community spirit reflected in Indian folk practices.
To attend, kindly register your participation through the link : https://forms.gle/43g8FWYMvLqKSX458
Hamari Ramleela is a feature-length ethnographic documentary that examines Ramleela not merely as a theatrical performance, but as a living cultural pedagogy sustained through collective memory, participation, and oral transmission. Rooted in everyday community life, the film documents how Ramleela functions as a shared social process where myth, belief, performance, and local history intersect to shape cultural identity.
Through an immersive observational approach, the documentary follows performers, organisers, and spectators across the cycle of preparation, rehearsal, and enactment, revealing Ramleela as a dynamic space of learning rather than a fixed spectacle. The film foregrounds how knowledge is produced and transmitted outside formal institutional frameworks, where storytelling, embodiment, and ritual become tools of intergenerational education. In doing so, it highlights the role of community-driven cultural practices in sustaining ethical values, collective responsibility, and historical consciousness.
Hamari Ramleela situates performance as a mode of collective knowledge-making, where faith and narrative are continually negotiated in the present. By focusing on lived experiences rather than staged commentary, the film positions Ramleela as an evolving socio-cultural practice that remains pedagogically relevant in contemporary India. The documentary ultimately explores how traditional performance cultures continue to function as accessible educational spaces, particularly in regions where formal modes of learning remain limited.
This documentary film has been directed by Rinku Sharma.
Rinku Sharma is an independent Indian filmmaker whose work explores community life, labour, and the survival of cultural traditions within contemporary urban spaces. His feature documentary Hamari Ramleela observes a community-led Ramleela performance in a residential colony in Delhi, highlighting the informal labour and collective effort that sustain the tradition today.
The film won at the Janakpur International Film Festival (Nepal), was nominated for the FIPRESCI–India Grand Prix (2024), and was officially selected at the International Film Festival of Shimla.
Sharma’s filmmaking practice is rooted in long-form observation and field-based documentary storytelling, focusing on everyday communities and the social conditions shaping cultural continuity.
