Mumbai: Ankita Gusain’s debut documentary, Six Weeks, 3 Days, and All the Years Before, explores her complex relationship with her father, who left when she was very young.
The Absence That Shaped Her
“He has been distant throughout my life, and later on, when I grew up, I too became distant from him,” says the Mumbai-based filmmaker, whose film will premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) 2026 on November 14.
It was only later, while she was at film school, that she managed to examine that relationship more deeply.
“It is not just presence that shapes a person, but also absence. A lot of my understanding of life and human relationships comes from the fact that he was not there,” she says.
A Visual Letter to Her Unborn Child
Six Weeks, 3 Days, and All the Years Before is a reflection on her father’s disappearance and eventual return, revisiting their relationship through a visual letter to her unborn child.
The title alludes to the exact moment she first heard her child’s heartbeat: six weeks and three days.
How the Title Came Together
“When I got to know about the pregnancy, a lot of things changed for me,” says Ankita, who was still making the film at that point. The news changed the way she understood things, and so it became an important and integral part of the title.
“And the second part of the title, ‘All the years before’, is because everything that happened previous to that is what I started this film with,” she adds.
