Girl Stars: Suryamani the Forest Activist

Umang Bhattacharya
India, short, 2006
8 mins. (Digi Beta)

Suryamani is filmed in the beautiful forest of Jharkhand, in a land of green trees, beautiful flowers and birds. Suryamani is a tribal environmental activist who loves her forest. Suryamani studied hard at school because she loved the forest and knew that she had to do something to save it. In college she became a part of the 'Save the Forest' movement. Today, Suryamani fights for the right of her community to live in forests and helps them to register their lands. She also runs her own organization 'Torang'to help preserve her tribal culture as well as her forest- and to do this, she takes nature walks with children on the weekends explaining that 'our survival is linked to the survival of the forest'