In a forest of rivers, estuaries, trees, and all other living beings, do not dream anymore. As dreams are to change and to be changed, these people do not know how to drift into the worlds they used to know so well. The worlds of Shushuk, the world of indigenous people around a mangrove forest, were always the same. But the world fell apart. Both are looking for each other, but the calls are never heard.
Cohabitation rules are broken by watertight embankments; both human and non-human were forgotten when their worlds got upside down by bringing saltwater and shrimp farming, ruining the complete livelihood of communities. Reetu Sattar makes visible an archive of ruins in a forest, highlighting environmental and social violence while connecting human and non-human experiences of water, sound, and survival. The film traces how embankments along the river, first built under British colonial rule, have raised riverbeds and let salt accumulate in soil and water—eroding the livelihood and culture of communities.
That same salinity also harms the endangered Ganges river dolphin, whose sonar increasingly meets silence or bounces off the dikes lining the riverbank. Sattar treats this failed echolocation as a metaphor for the loss of the indigenous community.
This work-in-progress film treats the climate crisis not as an abstract phenomenon, but as specific materials — salt, mud, sound — felt most by those, human and non-human, with the least power to change it.
Reetu Sattar’s latest commission by the Samdani Art Foundation was developed through Tondra, an SAF project bringing together Bangladeshi artists with international curators and mentors. Mentored by Tondra curator Hiuwai Chu, Sattar is developing In sleep comes the silent songs and an absent forest, a film project made in collaboration with the Halda River Dolphin Research Lab, Daniel Gonzalez Socoloske, Ecologist and Conservation Biologist, Andrews University and Dr Nachiket Kelkar, wildlife marine ecologist and Head, Riverine Ecosystems and livelihoods at the Wildlife Conservation Trust, India.
Loop Festival 2026
With the support of the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona and the Generalitat de Catalunya.
