On September 30, the award ceremony of the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK) took place in Thiruvananthapuram amid a debate over whether filmmakers should accept their awards or refuse to do so in solidarity with the seven films the Union government had denied permission to screen.That afternoon, many filmmakers whose films were in competition demanded that those of us whose films had been withheld be called onto the stage, at least to read out a statement.By evening, we were sitting inside the Kairali Theatre. My short documentary, Sanitised Republic: Cast(e) & Contracts, which I co-directed with Afiya Khalid, was among the seven films denied a censor exemption by the Union government, alongside Parliament Street and The Mali and the Parasite. No reason had been given to us.The ceremony opened with the chief minister of Kerala calling all of us whose films had been denied onto the stage. “We are fighting for your films,” he said. He assured us that if the courts ruled in our favour, our film would be screened at the next edition of the IDSFFK in 2027.But none of us was given a chance to read our statement, even though we had prepared one.The audience applauded. There was something strange about being applauded for a promise made to us when we had come to the festival for a screening of our films.The workers behind the filmSanitised Republic: Cast(e) & Contracts is set in two government hospitals in Delhi – Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital, and Kalawati Saran Children’s Hospital (which is attached to the former). The film documents the experiences of the sanitation workers who cleaned the COVID wards. All of them are from Dalit and other marginalised communities.Their testimony speaks not only of what happened during the pandemic. The film shows a larger pattern. Across sectors, contractual work is often done by people from marginalised caste communities. Caste pushes them into this work, and contractual employment leaves them exposed to exploitation and sudden loss of livelihood.During the pandemic, they did work beyond their duties, moving between wards and the mortuary without leave and risking their lives. They were promised preference for permanent jobs. But when the pandemic ended, around 400 of them lost their jobs in a single day at these two hospitals.In one scene, a worker Kanti Ram recalls the flower petals showered from helicopters on healthcare workers during the pandemic: “Ham par phool nahi barsaya gaya tha, hamara matam manaya gaya tha (Flowers were not showered on us; we were mourned).” As he says this, one can see anger and sadness surface together in his eyes.Another worker, Ruqaiya, lost her life while serving COVID patients. Her son said the hospital did not even recognise that she was their employee.This 20-minute film tells the story of their three-year struggle, including a protest they sustained in central Delhi for more than a year. It ends with a few of the workers walking out of court, exhausted, but still hopeful.Kantiram in a scene from Sanitised Republic.In June 2025, when we revisited Kanti Ram’s house, in Baba Faridpuri in north Delhi, he had a fractured leg and had been unemployed since 2022, when he was fired from his hospital.It was peak summer. We sat in a tiny room where the air barely entered. Kanti Ram spoke about the film with excitement. He was hopeful that at least their story and struggle would be known.The promise of a screeningFor independent documentary filmmakers, the IDSFFK is more than the festival circuit.When Sanitised Republic was selected for IDSFFK 2026, it felt like the story had finally found a room where we could show it uncensored.A few days after the selection in the first week of September, the festival wrote to us. The Union government had objected to the use of a few seconds of audio in which the prime minister himself announced the lockdown. We removed the audio and sent the film back, hoping it would still screen.We then received another objection, this time saying the film had a “specific reference” to the prime minister, but without clarifying what the specific reference was. We edited the film again based on our own judgment and sent another version.This was not the first time Sanitised Republic had faced such an objection. The film had earlier been denied screening at the Durgapur Film Festival and the Riturangam Film Festival on the same grounds.On the morning of September 21, a fellow filmmaker called to tell me that the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had denied a censor exemption to our film, along with 30 other selected films. We were clueless about the grounds on which this had happened. The burden was left on filmmakers to find out why their films had been denied.Of the 31 films initially denied, 24 were eventually cleared after the Kerala government took up the matter with the Union government. Sanitised Republic was not among them. Neither were The Mali and the Parasite, about corporate exploitation in the hills of Odisha, or Parliament Street, about the memory of a city.A festival officer told me, unofficially, that the government had probably denied the film for being “too critical”. I do not know whether that was the reason. But if it was, then even the prime minister’s own words, in the context he spoke them, had become something that could not be shown.We went to meet Raveendran, the chairperson of the Kerala State Chalachithra Academy, a government body established to counter the “gross commodification of the film medium” and which organises film festivals across the state, including the IDSFFK. He said the festival was with us. But he also said their hands were tied by procedure.Under the Cinematograph Act, 1952, a film needs a certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification for theatrical release. Film festivals work differently. To screen a film that does not have a censor certificate at a non-commercial festival, the film needs to obtain an exemption from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting through the festival director.Many independent filmmakers rely on this exemption rather than certification for festival screenings, which is one reason festivals are usually seen as spaces for freedom of expression and artistic freedom.A scene from Sanitised Republic.Who stood with usThe 2026 edition will be remembered for the denied films. Former members of the festival’s jury, including 2024 jury chairperson Rakesh Sharma and 2025 jury chairperson Ranjit Ray, wrote to the Academy. They said: if the films cannot be screened publicly, at least send the links to the jury. Let them be considered for awards. We later heard that members of the current jury were also speaking to the festival on our behalf.Film scholar and art curator Ashish Rajadhyaksha used the festival lecture platform to speak about our film and censorship, showing a few minutes of our film to the audience before speaking about documentary filmmaking as an act of truth-telling and how our film embodied that idea. He also wrote a piece in The Wire titled “The Films Banned at the Kerala Festival Need to Be Seen”.Later, more than 60 filmmakers signed a joint statement. They said: screen every denied film for the jury or cancel the award ceremony. Kamal K.M., Ameya Gore and Debalina Majumdar were among them. Their own films were in competition. They did not have to stand with us. They did anyway.The long waitEventually, the Academy moved the Kerala high court against the Union government’s decision. The court on September 28 declined to grant interim permission for the withheld films to be screened during the festival, which began screening films from the 25th. The matter will be heard on November 13.In court, the additional solicitor general submitted that six of the seven documentaries had been sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs and one to the Ministry of External Affairs to check their content.This felt familiar to me. The workers in our film had won a court order, only to see it remain unimplemented for years.On May 31, 2022, the Delhi high court ordered that a change of contractor should not affect existing workers. They were terminated the next day, June 1, the day the sanitation contract went to another company, replacing Sulabh International Social Service Organisation. In July 2022, the court asked the hospital why the contract had no safeguard against replacing long-serving contractual sanitation workers with new ones.The workers spent more than a year protesting in Delhi, waiting for their jobs and fighting for dignity. We had filmed that waiting. Now our own film has become a case study in waiting.We wait for November 13. We wait to see if the court rules in our favour and if the Kerala government’s assurances translate into action.I was called onto a stage once, for an assurance. I am still waiting to be called onto one for a screening. I think often of Kanti Ram, sitting in that airless room.Rizwan Rahman is a Delhi-based independent journalist, researcher and documentary filmmaker. His work focuses on Indigenous communities, human rights and climate change.