Telling the stories of Nepali girls and women — Assembly

The new documentary “I am Belmaya” chronicles filmmaker Belmaya Nepali’s fight to pursue her passion.

Belmaya Nepali was 14 years old when she picked up a camera for the first time.

The future filmmaker was living in a girls’ home in Pokhara, Nepal when she attended a photography workshop sponsored by the nonprofit Asha Nepal. Belmaya learned how to take pictures and soon began capturing everything around her — her family, friends, local animals and the landscapes of Nepal.

For Belmaya, learning about and practising photography awakened an ambition in her — one she’d never considered before but suddenly couldn’t imagine her life without. She loved being able to express herself in a way she hadn’t been able to before. At the end of the Asha Nepal project, Belmaya and her peers’ photos were compiled and published in the book “My World, My View.”

“Maybe because of everyone's love and the photos I took [were published] in [a] book, I started to feel like I could do something,” Belmaya shares.

“I knew how girls suffer[ed] and my own sufferings as well, and I wanted to show these,” Belmaya shares. “That was the reason I got inspired to embark on my films.” (Courtesy of Sue Carpenter/Asha Nepal)

The confidence Belmaya felt behind the lens was a new experience for her. Growing up, she faced the stigma of being a Dalit — a person belonging to a lower caste — and struggled to find her place at home and in school. “When I was [a] little child, it was very difficult [to] read, eat and live,” she shares. “When I didn't know how to read, then my teacher[s], my friend[s], everyone talked down to me.” Though Belmaya wanted to go to school, she faced many barriers in accessing education. Her teachers and peers discouraged her from learning, the schools in her community were low in quality and she felt pressure to support her family by working and doing household chores over studying.

“The challenges I had to face in my childhood are known to a daughter born in a normal household like me,” she says. “Most of the girls in my community have been suffering a lot. They have not been educated. They have no food to eat, clothes to wear, [or] education.”

Photography offered Belmaya the chance to develop technical skills and build her self-esteem — but her journey as a photographer ended abruptly after the girls’ home she lived in banned the girls from using cameras. For years she was unable to practise photography. Belmaya eventually married and had a daughter — but the urge to pick up a camera never left her. So when she heard about a filmmaker in Pokhara who was training girls from rural backgrounds in filmmaking, Belmaya sought help from Asha Nepal. Thanks to the organisation’s funding and support, she was able to enrol in the training programme in 2014.

Once again Belmaya found herself behind the camera — this time as a filmmaker. As she learned more about the medium and developed her technique, Belmaya realised that filmmaking could be a tool for documenting the challenges that she and other Nepali girls and women faced. “I knew how girls suffer[ed] and my own sufferings as well, and I wanted to show these,” Belmaya shares. “That was the reason I got inspired to embark on my films.”

“Educate Our Daughters,” her final film from the training programme and first major project, explored the importance of educating girls and young women in Nepal. She then went on to make the short film “Rowing Against the Flow,” which documents the lives and stories of three women who row boats commercially in Pokhara.

Belmaya with British journalist and photographer Sue Carpenter. (Courtesy of Sue Carpenter/Asha Nepal)

Last year, it was Belmaya’s turn to be in front of the camera. After the success of her first two projects, Belmaya collaborated with British journalist and photographer Sue Carpenter on “I am Belmaya,” a documentary about the young filmmaker’s fight to pursue her passion despite the challenges she’s faced. The documentary — which premiered October 11, 2021 on International Day of the Girl — gives audiences a glimpse into Belmaya’s journey, from her fight for education and experience as a new mother to her work as a filmmaker and hopes for the future.

Belmaya believes that her film will help to create real change for girls and women in Nepal, change she hopes will come soon, for the sake of her daughter. “If we make such informative films, and if our society and country reforms, then standards will really change,” she says. “If we move forward with courage, we will never fall behind.”