Busan-Winning 'Shape of Momo' Director Targets a Village Border Dispute Over a Girl's Death

A 15-year-old girl hangs from a tree at daybreak, and two villages begin fighting over her body before it is even cut down. That dispute drives "A Chronicle of Minor Things," the new project from Tribeny Rai, the director whose debut "Shape of Momo" won the Songwon Vision Award at Busan in 2025.

The working-titled drama is part of the Asian Project Market, running within the Busan International Film Festival's Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM).

What is the story?

The tree holding the girl is rooted in one village; the branch she hangs from stretches over the other. Her death becomes a jurisdictional quarrel between the two communities. Rai, who set her debut inside a household of women, now turns to her own village.

"The village becomes a microcosm where power, money, and politics enter ordinary life in intimate ways, until we stop seeing them as systems at all," Rai said.

Who is Tribeny Rai?

"Shape of Momo" premiered at Busan in 2025, winning the Songwon Vision Award and the Taipei Film Commission Award. It later took the Golden Royal Bengal Tiger Award at the Kolkata International Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.

Rai said she gravitates toward stories that feel pressing now, and this one feels timely given the state of the world. She aims to build a world rooted in the village that viewers will slowly come to see as their own.

"I want the film to leave behind a quiet, unsettling realization – this is not a world apart from ours; it is the world we already live in," she said.

What does the producer say?

Producer Kislay, who worked with Rai on "Shape of Momo," said the new film widens her lens from a single family to a whole hilltop community whose calm surface hides a shifting world. He noted her gift for capturing characters with their complications and contradictions — and her treatment of the setting.

"In most films, such a setting might become a space of leisure or escape. Here, it becomes a metaphor for the larger forces at play, forces that are shaping both Bishnu, the protagonist, and the world around him," Kislay said.

The script is still in development. At the APM, the team hopes to find co-producers and financiers to move the project forward. Though grounded in a particular culture, the film deals with ambition, desire and social change — themes Kislay believes will speak to international audiences.