The Unfinished Story of Children’s Cinema in Manipur

For a film industry celebrated for its artistic ambition and cultural depth, Manipuri cinema has a striking blind spot: children.

Over the past five decades, Manipur has produced films that have won national honours, travelled to international festivals, and explored the social, political, and emotional complexities of life in the region. Yet remarkably few films have been made specifically for children. Childhood has frequently appeared in Manipuri cinema, but usually as a supporting element within adult narratives rather than as a world worthy of exploration in its own right.

The absence is difficult to ignore because the ingredients for a vibrant children's cinema have always existed. Manipur's folklore, landscapes, oral traditions, and community life offer an abundance of stories naturally suited to young audiences. What has been missing is not material, but commitment.

A handful of films across different decades reveal what children's cinema in Manipur could have become and perhaps still can.

One of the earliest and most significant examples is Paari (2000), directed by Aribam Syam Sharma and produced by the Children's Film Society of India. Set against the ecological backdrop of Manipur and centred on the endangered Sangai deer, the film follows a young boy whose encounter with a hunting trap evolves into a story about empathy, imagination, and environmental responsibility.

What made Paari remarkable was its refusal to speak down to children. Rather than relying on overt lessons, it trusted young viewers to engage with ideas of freedom, coexistence, and conservation through the emotional logic of a child's perspective. The film demonstrated that children's cinema could be both locally rooted and artistically ambitious. It later found recognition at major platforms, including the National Children's Film Festival and the International Film Festival of India, Goa. 

Yet despite its achievements, Paari remained an exception. It did not inspire a wave of children's filmmaking, nor did it lead to any sustained effort to build a culture around stories made for younger audiences.

A different approach emerged in Makhonmani Mongsaba's Yenning Amadi Likla (2007), a film that confronted the realities of child neglect and abuse. Through the story of Sanatomba, a young boy growing up in a troubled household, the film addressed questions of child rights with unusual directness and sensitivity.

Unlike many films that romanticise childhood, Yenning Amadi Likla recognised that childhood can also be fragile, vulnerable, and deeply shaped by social circumstances. Drawing from real-life experiences encountered through child welfare work, the film treated its subject with honesty rather than sentimentality. Its selection for the Indian Panorama section of the International Film Festival of India, Goa reflected its significance.

But once again, the achievement remained isolated. The industry applauded the film, yet little followed. There was no visible attempt to create a sustained space for children's narratives or encourage filmmakers to engage with young audiences in a meaningful way.

Perhaps the most revealing chapter in the history of Manipuri children's cinema began not with an established filmmaker, but with a child.

Long before he made actual films, Priyakanta Laishram was already creating stories with toys. Like many children, he invented worlds and characters, but unlike most, he began translating those imagined narratives into moving images. What started as play gradually evolved into filmmaking.

In 2009, at just eleven years old, Priyakanta Laishram made three independent children's films—Lammuknarure, Achumbadi Amarni, and Chan-Thoibi. The first two were shot and edited on a Nokia N70 mobile phone using its in-built video editing software, while Chan-Thoibi was filmed on a small Sony Cybershot digital camera. He wrote, directed, and edited the projects himself, relying entirely on the limited tools available to him and the support of children from his neighbourhood, family, and circle of friends.

What emerged was more than a child's experiment. These films represented something rarely seen in Indian cinema: children creating cinema about childhood from their own perspective. Their concerns were simple yet authentic—friendship, everyday conflicts, curiosity, adventure, and moral dilemmas understood through a child's eyes rather than interpreted by adults.

The significance of this achievement becomes clearer when viewed within the broader landscape of Manipuri cinema. At a time when the industry itself had produced very few films specifically centred on children, an eleven-year-old was independently constructing a miniature filmmaking ecosystem of his own. The casts and collaborators were largely children, creating stories that reflected their own experiences and imagination. In effect, Laishram was not merely making films; he was creating a space for children's storytelling that the industry itself had largely neglected.

The work attracted considerable attention. Local television channels and newspapers documented his journey. Nokia recognised him as the youngest filmmaker in India, while international agencies Reuters and ANI later carried his story, introducing him to audiences far beyond Manipur. Film critic Herojit Nongmaithem wrote about his talent with unusual conviction, invoking the old saying that a child's abilities reveal themselves early in life.

Yet what followed is perhaps the most telling part of the story.

There was admiration, but no infrastructure. Recognition, but no continuity. No organised effort emerged to encourage young filmmakers, create children's film programmes, or transform this remarkable moment into something larger. The achievement remained largely symbolic.

In retrospect, Laishram's early films stand as both an inspiring and cautionary example. They demonstrate the creative possibilities that exist among young people in Manipur, while simultaneously exposing how little institutional attention those possibilities have received. The fact that the same child would later emerge as one of Manipur's most distinctive independent filmmakers only reinforces what was already evident in 2009: the talent was there. The support system was not.

More recently, Lakshmipriya Devi's Boong has brought the conversation back into focus.

The film follows a young boy searching for his missing father while navigating questions of identity, belonging, and displacement. What distinguishes Boong is its confidence in a child's perspective. The film does not simplify complex emotions for younger audiences, nor does it use childhood merely as a vehicle for adult concerns. Instead, it trusts its protagonist's experiences and observations to carry the story.

That trust has resonated far beyond Manipur. Following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Boong went on to achieve unprecedented international recognition, becoming the first Indian film to win the BAFTA Award for Best Children's and Family Film.

Its success is significant not merely because of the award itself, but because it demonstrates that stories centred on children from Manipur can travel globally without sacrificing their cultural specificity. The film's achievement challenges the long-held assumption that children's cinema is somehow niche, secondary, or commercially insignificant.

Taken together, these works expose a paradox at the heart of Manipuri cinema.
The talent exists. The stories exist. The audience exists.

What does not exist is a sustained ecosystem.

Unlike other specialised forms of filmmaking, children's cinema in Manipur has never benefited from consistent funding, dedicated production initiatives, exhibition platforms, educational outreach, or long-term policy support. Each project has emerged as an exception rather than part of a larger cultural commitment. As a result, every breakthrough has remained isolated, disconnected from what came before and unable to inspire what might come next.

This raises an uncomfortable question: why has children's cinema remained so marginal within an industry otherwise known for artistic experimentation?

Part of the answer may lie in a persistent perception that children's films are somehow less serious than films made for adults. They are often viewed as educational supplements, niche projects, or commercially risky ventures rather than as legitimate cinematic works. Yet some of the most acclaimed film traditions in the world have repeatedly returned to childhood as a subject of profound artistic and social importance.

Manipuri cinema has already shown that it possesses the sensitivity and imagination required for such storytelling. Paari explored ecology through wonder. Yenning Amadi Likla confronted social realities through a child's experience. Priyakanta Laishram's early films captured childhood's instinctive creativity and self-expression. Boong demonstrated that a story from Manipur could speak to audiences across continents.

The challenge, therefore, is no longer one of capability. It is one of intent. For decades, children's cinema in Manipur has survived through isolated acts of conviction by individual filmmakers rather than through collective support from the industry. The result is an unfinished history marked as much by absence as achievement.

And that absence matters.

When a cinema fails to engage with children, it risks losing more than a demographic. It loses a way of seeing the world. Childhood is where imagination is formed, where empathy begins, and where the most fundamental questions about society are first encountered. To overlook it is to limit the emotional and creative possibilities of cinema itself.

The question is no longer whether Manipuri cinema can make children's films. It already has. The real question is whether it is willing to take them seriously—not once, not occasionally, but as an essential part of its future.