Our songs from the forest is tender story of a group of young women from Achham district in the Far West region of Nepal. The project features a group of young women who live there and addresses the practice of Chhaupadi. Each month, during their menstrual periods, they are subjected to a week-long ritual of isolation and oppression, where they are forced to live in cowsheds, as they are considered impure and untouchable by the rest of society. Despite being outlawed in 2005 and criminalized in 2018, the Chhaupadi practice endures, upheld by a deeply rooted fear of being ostracized by the family and community, of angering the gods, and of change.
As these young women start to question age-old practices and little by little push boundaries. Collaborating with young women of the village, the project led to a truly emancipatory question: where can one find freedom?