Rains Don't Make Us Happy Anymore – Films

Yashasvi Juyal
India | 2025 | 26 min
World premiere
Language : Hindi
Subtitles : English, French

In the high Himalayas, the village of Lohari is submerged below the waters of a hydroelectric dam. The last member of the Jaunsari tribe, living in the remnants of his flooded village, recalls a time when the land was pulsating with magic. Through letters to a girl long since gone, the boy’s tale unfolds, blurring the lines between reality and myth.

From the very first moments, a voice-over begins to weave a tale: the story of a ring found tangled in fishing nets. Then an image of a dam emerges, chilling in its modernity. Filmed at night and from afar, it evokes a timeless fortress, as if plucked from the pages of a legend. The camera draws closer, leading us into a space suspended between past and present, nature and technology, myth and reality. We are in the Himalayas, where the calm forest lizard shares its territory with dam workers gathered in the refectory. We learn that the village of Lohari — the narrator — is slowly vanishing beneath the dam’s rising waters. It is precisely at the moment when the past is drowned that myths resurface, in the form of voices. Living among the submerged ruins of his village, the last member of the Jaunsari tribe recalls a time when the earth still pulsed with magic. His monologue is addressed to an absent, perhaps long-gone woman — who nevertheless replies. The boundaries between timelines blur further, and the story unfolds in this in-between realm, where memory and imagination are intricately entwined.

Dimitri de Preux

Rains Don't Make Us Happy Anymore, 2025
The Last Rhododendron, 2022