Project Overview
A roof of one's own is a personal, hybrid documentary about the slow disappearance of Barsatis — rooftop homes that once dotted Delhi’s skyline, offering shelter to students, artists, migrants, and working-class families. What began as a historical exploration of these spaces turned into something more intimate: a meditation on home, loss, and belonging. I moved to Delhi two years ago from rural Madhya Pradesh and ended up living in a Barsati myself. Over time, I realised that I wasn’t just documenting a vanishing form of housing; I was also processing my own complicated relationship with home, shaped by grief and migration. The film blends observational footage, voiceover, and self-aware commentary to reflect on who gets to belong in a city that’s always reinventing itself, and what gets erased in the name of progress. It’s also an attempt to reimagine what the nonfiction medium can look like: honest, sharp, and fun.
Expected Impact
This project aims to spark reflection on a few different levels:. At a personal level, it invites viewers to think about what “home” really means, as an emotional and social construct. It’s about the invisible lives that unfold on the margins of urban spaces. Politically, it raises questions about who gets pushed out when cities modernize, and how infrastructure thinking, or the lack of it, shapes belonging, mobility, and memory. In doing so, it challenges the dominant narrative of “development” in India by focusing on what’s being lost. Formally, the film is boldly resisting the usual, old, boring tropes of documentary. It hopes to reconnect audiences, especially younger viewers, with nonfiction as a form that can be personal, critical, and still deeply watchable. The hope is that it resonates with anyone who's ever felt out of place in a city, or unsure where home really is.
Applicant Background
Nayan Sharma is a self-taught filmmaker and writer based in New Delhi. He grew up beside a national park in central India, where early encounters with nature shaped his sense of slowness, silence, and the unseen rhythms of daily life. That sensitivity now informs his ongoing exploration of belonging, migration, and quiet forms of alienation in modern cities. His work moves between nonfiction and experimental documentary. His latest film, a roof of one's own, is an experimental documentary about the quiet disappearance of rooftop homes (Barsaatis) in Delhi. It reflects a broader interest in documenting what’s vanishing — spaces, communities, and ways of living — and asking what, and who, remains when a city reinvents itself. Nayan’s work often returns to the same question: who truly belongs in the cities they help build, and what might it mean to live more in rhythm — with each other, and with nature.