Stronger

‘I wanna be free, I wanna be me,’ the refrain of Simi Carpenter’s song Stronger, captures one girl’s desire for autonomy. But the cry is universal. This is an artistic evocation of young women's yearning to break free from societal and parental chains to be themselves, told through the voice of a girl in rural Nepal. Her feelings of suppression are released in a frenzy of dancing, colour and joy, as she takes charge of her own life and is finally free. During the year of pandemic lockdowns, 2020, young Dalit director Belmaya Nepali won a commission by UK Asian Film Festival for their Ray of Hope strand, to create a 3min film collaboration between the UK and South Asian cultures, expressing 'hope'. Brought up in an impoverished Dalit family in a hill village near Pokhara, Nepal, Belmaya had suffered gender and caste discrimination as a child and young wife, but she wanted to depict her home land as one of beauty, where girls’ natural spirit of joy will always shine through. She and composer Simi Carpenter (producer/editor Sue Carpenter's Nepal-born daughter) discussed the storyline, after which Simi wrote and sang the original song Stronger. As soon as Covid restrictions were lifted, Belmaya travelled to her sister’s hill village and shot the footage featuring her two young nieces and their friend, expressing Simi’s lyrics visually. The film premiered at UKAFF 2021.