माय मेलबर्न

My Melbourne is a 2025 Indo-Australian anthology film featuring four stories about identity and belonging, inspired by true incidents in Melbourne, Australia. Each segment was directed by a celebrated Indian filmmaker: Onir (Emma — exploring sexuality and disability in a multicultural context), Rima Das (Nandini — examining race and identity through a Bengali-Australian woman's experience), Imtiaz Ali (Jules — a story of gender and self-expression), and Kabir Khan (Setara — a story of an Afghan refugee woman named Setara building a new life in Australia). Produced by Mitu Bhowmick Lange, the film was produced with support from the Melbourne International Film Festival and explores themes of diversity, sexuality, gender, disability, and race through distinctly Indian cinematic voices applied to the Australian multicultural experience. The film premiered on August 15, 2024 at the 15th Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) and released theatrically in Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji on March 6, 2025, before its Indian theatrical release on March 14, 2025. Runtime: 119 minutes. Languages: English, Bengali, Hindi, Dari, Auslan.

My Melbourne has a sparse, three-song soundtrack running 7:20 minutes total: My Melbourne Title Track (music by Tamil Rogeon, sung in English by Janaki Easwar and in Punjabi by Parvyn Kaur Singh, 2:10); Jaana Hai (music and lyrics by Anurag Sharma, sung in Hindi-Punjabi by Aryana Sayeed, 2:35); Azadi (music by Anurag Sharma, sung in Dari/Farsi by Aryana Sayeed, 2:35). The film won Best Music at the 17th Jaipur International Film Festival 2025 for this soundtrack. Aryana Sayeed is an Afghan pop singer whose Dari-language song Azadi gives voice to the Setara segment about an Afghan refugee woman.

My Melbourne is a rare and historically significant Indo-Australian co-production, gathering four of India's most distinctive auteurs — Onir, Rima Das, Imtiaz Ali, and Kabir Khan — to dramatise real stories of diversity and belonging from the Indian and South Asian diaspora in Melbourne. Its thematic breadth — queerness and disability (Onir's segment), race and Bengali-Australian identity (Rima Das), gender and self-expression (Imtiaz Ali), and Afghan refugee experience (Kabir Khan) — is unusually wide for a Hindi-adjacent film. The film's sparse but precisely calibrated soundtrack, featuring Afghan pop singer Aryana Sayeed's Dari-language 'Azadi', represents one of 2025's most distinctive film music experiments.

My Melbourne premiered at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne on 15 August 2024 and released theatrically in India on 14 March 2025. The film won Best Music at the 17th Jaipur International Film Festival 2025, recognising Anurag Sharma's soundtrack and Aryana Sayeed's Dari-language performance. As a multilingual anthology without major commercial stars, its theatrical reach was modest; its legacy is primarily festival, critical, and as an early example of formal Indo-Australian cinematic collaboration.