By the River

Australia, India

25', 2019

DIRECTED BY

Dan Braga Ulvestad

PRODUCED BY

Charu Menon

SCRIPTWRITER

Dan Braga Ulvestad

CINEMATOGRAPHER

Caleb Ware

EDITED BY

Andrew Holmes

CONTACT

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Stretching along the river Ganges rests Varanasi, the holiest of India’s seven sacred cities, and a place where devout Hindus go to die in hopes of achieving moksha – becoming liberated from the cycle of rebirth. Hindu scriptures say that a soul has to undergo 8.4 million rebirths before reaching the human form, the only form one can attain moksha, and dying in Varanasi and being cremated along the banks of the river is believed to be the ideal way of achieving this. Several so-called ‘death hotels’ exist to accommodate believers who abandon their lives and come here in wait for death – some for as long as 40 years.

 

Daniel Braga Ulvestad is a Norwegian director based in Berlin. After working alongside some of the best in the motion design industry on high-end projects, he is now on a path to tell human stories with honesty at its heart, using the film medium as his tool.