By The River

The short film is a portrait of Varanasi, the holiest of India’s seven sacred cities and a place where devout Hindus go to die in hopes of achieving Moksha - becoming liberated from the cycle of rebirth. Hindu scriptures say that a soul has to undergo 8.4 million rebirths before reaching the human form and dying in Varanasi and being cremated along the banks of the river is believed to be the ideal way of achieving Moksha. Several so-called ‘death hotels’ exist to accommodate believers who abandon their lives go there and wait for death, some for as long as 40 years.