A forest guard traipses through the thickets of a national park with a stick, stopping to touch the trees with a bejewelled hand that has traces of nail polish on the fingers. During the day, they don a khaki uniform to patrol the forest, but when the sun goes down, they swap their trousers and shirt for an embroidered salwar kameez and dupatta that twirls with their movements as they dance with joy and freedom.
These scenes are captured in a riveting and fascinating new documentary that has been longlisted for the BAFTA Student Awards 2025 and officially selected for this year’s New York Indian Film Festival and the Rome Short Film Festival 2024. “Babli by Night” by director Neel Soni reflects on freedom, resilience, and the unexpected ways in which people find harmony within themselves and with the world around them.
The documentary centres around the eponymous Babli, also known as Babban, a transgender forest guard based in Uttarakhand’s Jim Corbett National Park. Living in a place where queerness hides in the shadows because of society's silence, confusion and refusal to see someone as they truly are, Babban’s life is quietly accepted and embraced by a natural world that offers them refuge, nourishment and strength.
Filmed over a period of four years across multiple schedules in order to let the story unfold at its own pace, Soni has brought patience, presence and a deep sense of responsibility to telling Babban’s story. This was a conscious choice he made right from the beginning.
“The documentary form felt like the only honest way to tell ‘Babli by Night.’ Babban’s story isn’t one that could be scripted or fictionalised without losing something essential, the texture of real life, the quiet dignity in the way they move through the world, and the spontaneous moments of beauty and pain that unfolded over time,” Soni says in an interview with Outlook Traveller.
“I wasn’t chasing a plot, I was witnessing a life. The form also gave me space to sit with silences, with contradictions [and] with the slow shifts that happen when someone begins to reclaim their story. In the end, ‘Babli by Night’ became less about making a film and more about holding space, for Babban, for myself, and for the quiet truths that only emerge when you're not trying to control them.”
The process of telling Babban’s story began months before a single frame was shot. Capturing the story of someone whose life slips under the radar in more ways than one called for a strong sense of trust and responsibility that took time, patience and a deep willingness to simply listen on Soni’s part.
“For months, I just sat with Babban, had conversations, tried to understand their world, their rhythms, fears, joys and silences. Trust wasn’t built on what I said I was going to do, but on showing up consistently without judgment, without an agenda beyond being present. With the forest officials too, it was about transparency. I made it clear that I wasn’t trying to sensationalise anything. I was there to tell a human story, about survival, about healing, about identity, in a space most people rarely see. I kept them in the loop throughout, especially when it came to what I was filming and how I was filming it. Over time, they saw the respect with which I approached Babban and the forest itself, and I think that’s what ultimately allowed me access to such a sensitive and layered world,” he says.
This ethics of care was tested when Babban was diagnosed with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) three years into the filming process. At that point, the documentary team was deep in the editing process, but when the news broke, filmmaking took a backseat.
“We had to navigate unfamiliar systems, find the right healthcare and most of all, figure out how to support Babban in ways I had never anticipated,” Soni recalls. “It raised another difficult question—whether to document this part of their life or leave it out entirely. I went back and forth on it, wrestling with it alongside my team. And then, one day, Babban said something that stayed with me: ‘I just want to be happy in the forest with my animals. It doesn’t matter how long I have.’
“That moment was everything. It was quiet, but it carried so much weight. It became the reason I chose to include that chapter in the film. Not to dwell in tragedy, but to honour the peace Babban had found, and the courage it takes to choose joy, even when the world doesn’t make it easy.”
“Babli by Night” resists easy narratives in favour of something more grounded, truthful and expansive. A lot of films about marginalised communities can fall into the trap of sensationalism or voyeurism, overemphasising trauma or focusing on difference in a way that feels extractive, says Soni. He hopes that when viewers see the film, they rethink their assumptions about who belongs in the environmental space and what an environmentalist is supposed to look like.
“There’s often a very narrow idea of who gets to speak for nature, who gets to be seen as a protector of the land. In that sense, Babban’s story completely challenges that narrative. One of the biggest misconceptions is that queer and trans people exist only within the context of their gender or sexuality—that their lives revolve solely around identity struggles or urban activism. But Babban is a forest guard. They wake up every day and protect the land, patrol the forest [and] care for animals. Their queerness doesn’t separate them from the natural world; it’s a part of how they move through it,” he says.
“What I witnessed over those four years was how queerness in rural India often exists quietly, beneath the surface, in coded gestures and deep isolation. And yet there is so much resilience in that. There is a different kind of strength that comes from surviving in spaces that do not see you at all. I hope the film reminds people that queerness and nature are not separate; they often speak to each other in the most beautiful [and] unexpected ways.”
Indian audiences hoping to catch “Babli by Night” will have to wait a while as Soni and his team are working with distributors to screen the film and find a permanent home for it after that. Over the next few months, he hopes to screen the film in New York, London, Paris, Marseille, Delhi and Mumbai.
Till then, Soni will continue to lead on other projects with the lessons he picked up along the way in the shooting of this documentary: being empathetic, staying curious and always willing to be changed by the story he is telling.
