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About This Film
Uma is a terminally ill Bengali girl living abroad who has never experienced Durga Puja in Kolkata. When doctors fear she will not survive until autumn, her father Himadri decides to recreate the festival months early with the help of a struggling filmmaker and an entire network of participants. Srijit Mukherji’s premise makes the holiday the film’s impossible project: streets, idols, rituals, crowds, and community belief must be manufactured out of season so one child can experience a tradition tied to home and identity. The resulting conflict asks who has the authority to decide whether ritual remains authentic when compassion changes the calendar.
Vibe
Durga Puja —
Watch For
- Watch how the recreated Puja requires coordination across artisans, performers, neighborhoods, and authorities.
- Notice the tension between ritual authenticity and the father’s urgent emotional need.
- Track Uma’s diasporic relationship to Bengal; the festival is something she knows through family memory before direct experience.
- Pay attention to the filmmaker character, whose staged spectacle becomes an act of communal care rather than ordinary production.
Production Notes
SVF, the film’s producer, explicitly describes Uma as the story of a father staging Durga Puja months early for his terminally ill daughter. The production was inspired by the real story of Canadian child Evan Leversage, whose community moved Christmas forward because he was unlikely to survive until December. Mukherji transformed that source into a specifically Bengali story by replacing Christmas with Durga Puja, making the cultural adaptation itself part of the film’s creative history. Hoichoi lists the feature as a 2018 drama and preserves the principal cast and director.
Trivia
- Srijit Mukherji directed the film.
- SVF produced it.
- Jisshu Sengupta plays the father, while his real-life daughter Sara Sengupta plays Uma.
- The story was inspired by Evan Leversage, whose Canadian community staged Christmas early.
- Mukherji deliberately replaced Christmas with Durga Puja to create a Bengali cultural equivalent.
Legacy
Uma is one of the collection’s clearest examples of holiday centrality because the film is literally about building the holiday. Its premise makes ritual authenticity, cultural belonging, community labor, and the calendar itself dramatic questions. The real-life inspiration adds another layer: Mukherji did not merely transplant an event but converted the emotional idea of an early Christmas into the Bengali significance of Durga Puja. That adaptation process makes the film especially valuable within a global holiday collection, demonstrating how similar emotional needs can produce culturally specific forms.