Nitin Bathla and Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou will be screening their movie, “Not Just Roads” at the Encounters session.

NOT JUST ROADS is an ethnographic documentary film that narrates the story of a massive urban transformation underway in India.

Highways are being constructed at an unprecedented rate of 23 kilometers per day under the Indian government’s Bharatmala (‘Garland of Limitless Roads’) program. The program aims to open new territories for the emerging Indian middle class. Currently, the territory is inhabited by villages, working class neighbourhoods, and nomadic herders. It is criss-crossed by native trails and vital ecological commons. This film captures the story of one such highway outside Delhi, from the perspective of human and non-human actors.

NITIN BATHLA is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich, where he coordinates the Doctoral Programme at the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies. Additionally, He lectures on urban studies, political ecology, and sociology and work as part of the transdisciplinary project on agri-urbanisms at the Chair of Sociology.

KLEARJOS EDUARDO PAPANICOLAOU is a Greek/Mexican filmmaker interested in ethnography as a filmmaking methodology. His films and collaborations include ‘The Seven Sisters Indoor Market’ (2016), ‘The Disappearance of Robin Hood’ (2018), and ‘Not Just Roads’ (2020). He is currently based in Zürich, where he teaches ethnographic filmmaking at the urban scale at the ETHZ.

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