Our Family

Set in Tamilnadu India Our Family brings together excerpts from Nirvanam a one person performance by Pritham K Chakravarthy and a family of three generations of transgendered female subjects Aasha Seetha and Dhana who are bound together by ties of adoption They all belong to the transgendered community called Aravanis aka Hijras in some parts of India The film juxtaposes the normality of their existence with the dark and powerful narrative by Pritham Nirvanam Nirvanam Liberation refers to the act of liberating oneself from the male body and transforming oneself to a female This narrative bears witness to the tumultuous journey towards a reinvented selfhood a journey fraught with violence exploitation affection and courage The pains pleasures and dilemmas of becoming the other is the motif of the film Weaving together performance life histories and everyday life it problematises the divides between us and them