This short film portrays a Nepali artist who flees the repression of the Panchayat system, and ends up at the Ecole Des Beaux Artes in Paris. It is now 20 years later, and he is waiting at the gate for his daughter, who has been accepted to the very same university, where he has also met his French wife. The marriage however, is falling apart, but he doesn't know this yet. As his daughter walks off with a friend, he looks and sees his wife kissing her lover. This is the first time he's met the lover, who's ten years younger. He realizes the marriage is over. He thinks back to the phonecall his first wife has made him from Nepal--telling him is daughter from the first marriage has been jailed for joining the Maoist Movement in Nepal. He realizes he has to make a choice. Will he stay in Paris, where he's spent the majority of his adult life, or will he return to Nepal?

In the summer of 2006, I attended the New York Film Academy's directing program in Paris. NYFA's program is based in La Femis, one of Paris's premier film institute. These are the 16mm shorts I shot: The Escape (2006) 9 minutes, fiction 16mm, black and white A schoolteacher from Mugu, Western Nepal, flees a troop of young Maoist cadres who come to kill him. Based on a true story told to the filmmaker by a teacher in an internally displaced camp in Kohalpur. A Nepali Emigre in Paris (2006) 4 minutes, fiction 16mm, black and white A Nepali man flees political repression and leaves for Paris as the fight for democracy begins. He has no reason to look back for twenty years—till now, when both his loyalty and his love are torn between two sides. Suzanne (2006) 4 minutes, fiction 16mm, black and white An homage to Leonard Cohen’s song.