Sangama: Coming Together is a 67-minute documentary that follows the citizens’ movement Wake-up Karnataka during India’s 2024 general election. Travelling with campaigners through villages, towns and political rallies across Karnataka, the film documents efforts to move public discussion away from religious polarization and towards everyday concerns such as unemployment, farmers’ distress and the rising cost of living.

Through community meetings, voter-registration drives and encounters on the campaign trail, the film examines grassroots political participation and the place of citizens’ movements within electoral democracy. In the filmmakers’ framing, Sangama foregrounds questions of dignity, resistance, inclusion and the everyday work of sustaining democratic participation. Commissioned by the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), Göttingen, the film forms part of Election Diaries 2024, a series documenting nine election campaigns across India.

The screening will be followed by a discussion and audience Q&A.

67 mins | Kannada, English, Hindi | Germany, India | 2025

Filmmaker

Sunanda Bhat

Sunanda Bhat is a documentary filmmaker and founder of Songline Films. Her work takes a patient, observational approach, focusing on people, place and processes of social and environmental change. Her first documentary, Bol Ayesha Bol (Speak Ayesha Speak), premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and her films have subsequently screened at film festivals in India and internationally. Ningal Aranaye Kando? (Have You Seen the Arana?)has been shown at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and at India Film Week at Metropolis Kino in Hamburg. She has also been an artist-in-residence at the Pepper House Residency of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and is a member of Vikalp Bengaluru.

Discussant

Dr Subir Sinha

Subir Sinha is Reader in the Theory and Politics of Development at SOAS University of London and Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute. His research focuses on institutional change, sustainable development, social movements, and state–society relations in South Asia. His current work examines decentralised development in India, early postcolonial planning, and the global fishworkers’ movement. He is also a member of the SOAS Food Studies Centre and an affiliate of the Department of History