Unfinished business in the love department is the central theme of Dominic Megam Sangma’s Ma’Ama (Moan, in Garo, from Meghalaya). It is extraordinary that the only Indian film in the International Competition of the Mumbai Film Festival, that concluded last week, was Ma’Ama from the Northeast, whose film industries are little fireflies, compared to the juggernauts of the Hindi, Tamil and Telugu film industries.

The film opens with a superb sequence, in which Philip, Dominic’s own 85-year-old father, is on a bald, windy mountain, surrounded by a score of silent, sullen women. It is his nightmare: his wife died 25 years ago, and he wants to tell her that he loves her — something he didn’t bother to do in all their lifetime together. But he is troubled, because he is unable to recognise his wife anymore. That apart, Dominic himself has no real memories of his mother, who died when he was about two: all his memories are secondhand, inherited from his family. The film is a quest to find out who she really was. All these combine to make an intriguing film, with eloquent silences that are rare in Indian cinema.