Thethri Khurmi

Thethri Khurmi follows Kishor and Reshma, a Chhattisgarhi migrant couple raising their young son Kaanha in a cramped chawl in Hyderabad. Far from home, they hold on to the familiar festival food, calls with Maa, small rituals while chasing one fragile dream: a house of their own. Kishor, poised and endlessly worried about his image and the respect he is owed, pins everything on a long-awaited promotion at his office.

But Venkatesh, an opportunist always watching for the chance to sabotage him, and a dominant landlord at home, slowly close every door around the family. As the warmth of belonging gives way to claustrophobia, humiliation and desperation, Kishor breaks not because he loses the job, but because he feels he has failed his family. In the face of collapse, it is Reshma who refuses to surrender. Without thinking twice, she sacrifices what she holds dearest to secure her family’s future.

In the end the new house stands in her name. She touches her father’s photograph, and what could have been defeat becomes quiet agency. Thethri Khurmi is a raw, realist portrait of a lower-middle-class family’s survival that questions the very definition of success, and asks what “home” really means not as a place, but as a feeling worth everything.

When it comes to survival, however rich or poor a person is, they can do anything to save and secure the life of their family. And a man, when put in conditions which do not favour him in a city unknown, it becomes an even bigger test. A woman will not fear to lose everything for her family and will sacrifice herself without thinking twice. This film will talk about the internal and external fights which every family goes through at least once in life. It also questions the definition of success. And finally, it aims to portray the core emotions of a lower-middle-class family and their survival.

The inspiration for this film came to me from the characters I created for our long-take exercise. When I gave it a thought and started building on them, they became a representation of the harsh reality of society. In some way or the other, this film resonates with me personally because of the struggles they face these are the everyday struggles in my family too, only in some other context, some other problems altogether. Especially, the characters are taken from my own family. The way they talk and react are the observed patterns I had picked up unknowingly all these years, and that makes the film even more real.

Runjhun Jain is a filmmaker and director focused on intimate, performance-driven storytelling that explores human relationships and emotional realism. Their short film Pichkari has garnered over 400,000 views on YouTube. Alongside independent work, Jain has served as an assistant director on multiple feature films, building a strong foundation in on-set collaboration and visual storytelling.