Pooja, Sir!

Pooja, Sir! is a riveting crime thriller centered on a child kidnapping amid Nepal’s turbulent 2015 political crisis. Pooja—a sharp, no-nonsense lesbian police commissioner brilliantly brought to life by Asha Magrati—peels back the layers of the case to reveal its true underpinnings. The darker-skinned Madhesi people fear being sidelined by the lighter-skinned Pahadis from the highlands, whose language, Nepali, dominates as the nation’s official tongue. Pooja herself is Pahadi, but she knows discrimination firsthand. Together with a local Madhesi officer, she cuts through patriarchal nepotism and caste hierarchies to get to the truth.

With fresh unrest erupting in Nepal this past September, the film hits hard and hits close to home.