Terrible Children

The film poses the universal question—must we betray our family to grow up? The filmmaker’s Indian father gives her a letter, which he left unopened for 20 years. She pieces together her father’s history of trauma and renewal—of family violence, boyhood in a right-wing paramilitary group, Muslim-Hindu violence during Partition, and family banishment for marrying a Danish woman. Told through personal narrative, reimagined history, and chronicles of racial nationalism, the film reveals the rich and complex interior lives of boys fighting to become men.