Wither & Bloom
Worcester, Massachusetts | Film Short
Experimental, Drama
After moving to the U.S., Nihara turns to an enigmatic doctor to revive her mother, trapped in a coma fueled by haunting homesickness. Support Wither & Bloom and help summon a haunting, transformative tale of migration, queer becoming, and ancestral ghosts. This film needs believers—like you.
Wither & Bloom
Worcester, Massachusetts | Film Short
Experimental, Drama
1 Campaigns |
45 supporters | followers
Enter the amount you would like to pledge
$5,195
Goal: $11,000 for production
After moving to the U.S., Nihara turns to an enigmatic doctor to revive her mother, trapped in a coma fueled by haunting homesickness. Support Wither & Bloom and help summon a haunting, transformative tale of migration, queer becoming, and ancestral ghosts. This film needs believers—like you.
Participating In
About The Project
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Namaste! My name is Gyani, and I’m a Worcester-based filmmaker. Last year, I created a short film called Moving Room, a semi-autobiographical exploration of queerness, diaspora, and adolescent displacement that screened at festivals across the country. Check out the trailer here!
This year, I’m excited to share my new project, Wither & Bloom—a surreal short that continues to explore diasporic identity, gender, and intergenerational care through the lens of magical realism and emotional abstraction.
Wither & Bloom follows a queer immigrant daughter navigating care, identity, and memory after her mother falls into a mysterious coma soon after they migrate to the U.S. When an enigmatic doctor arrives, ritual collides with medicine, and Nihara is drawn into a haunting dreamworld shaped by her mother’s homesickness. As surreal visions of roots, flowers, and shifting bodies unravel around her, Nihara must confront what it means to heal when language, culture, and gender no longer hold steady. Blending horror, magical realism, and intimate abstraction, Wither & Bloom explores the emotional aftershocks of migration and the rituals we create to survive what we cannot name.
This film is for those who’ve left home but still feel it in their bones.
For queer and trans kids raised in silence, searching for language that fits.
For immigrant daughters who became caregivers too soon.
For those who crossed oceans and lost parts of themselves along the way.
For those who live in dreams and wake up with ghosts.
For bodies shaped by absence, and identities still unfolding.
For those still learning how to live, love, and bloom—on new soil.
When I left Sikkim at fifteen to move to the United States, I entered a world that was familiar in language, but alien in feeling. I could speak English, but I couldn’t explain who I was—not to others, and not yet to myself. That first year was marked by an aching silence. I was grieving a version of home that had already begun to slip away, and trying to become someone without knowing what I had left behind.
Wither & Bloom is rooted in that grief. It is shaped by the liminal space between cultures, between genders, between the self I was and the self I’m still becoming. It’s a film that asks what happens when the people we love—our parents, our elders—lose their sense of belonging, and what it means to care for them while still struggling to care for ourselves.
The attacks on migration and the rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights, under the Trump administration, are an ongoing, daily reality that makes Wither & Bloom an urgent and necessary film. The heightened xenophobia and nationalistic rhetoric impacts lives, and amplifies the already arduous struggle for immigrants to retain their cultural identity while integrating into a new society.
Wither & Bloom delves into homesickness not just as a psychological state, but as a metaphysical one, exploring grief, transformation, and memory through a surreal lens. This takes on an even more poignant layer of meaning when considering the profound psychological toll that discriminatory policies and ongoing hateful rhetoric inflict, turning the very concept of home into a battleground.
This is not a film about answers. It’s an act of quiet resistance, embracing in-betweenness as a place of freedom, recognizing that survival sometimes means invisibility, but not a permanent state.
Nihara – 25, newly arrived in the U.S. with her mother. Sharp, introverted, and quietly overwhelmed. She's navigating the weight of care, culture shock, and identity all at once—without the language to name any of it. She doesn’t think of herself as spiritual…until she has to be.
Aama (Nihara’s Mother) – In her early 50s. Once radiant and rooted, now silent and still. Her homesickness runs so deep it manifests as sleep. In dreams, she walks through fog, roots, and memory—trying to return to something that may no longer exist.
The Doctor – Ageless, polished, and deeply unsettling. Part corporate mouthpiece, part metaphysical oracle. He arrives with contracts, rituals, and riddles, turning diagnosis into a haunting performance. He’s not here to comfort—but maybe, in some way, to transform.
June 2025 - Crowdfunding Kicks Off
July 2025 - Rehearsal, Tech Scouts, Test Shoot
August 2025 - Production
September & October 2025 - Post Production (Editing / Color / Score / Credits)
November 2025 - Festival Submissions
Wither & Bloom is currently blossoming in its pre-production development, cultivated by an exceptional team dedicated to its vision. We've meticulously planned every seed of this project, from a comprehensive budget to our filming schedule and crowdfunding strategy. To truly bring this film to life, securing the necessary funding is crucial. Your support will allow us to uncover unique and resonant locations that breathe life not only into Nihara's journey, but our own team’s as well. Funds will also go towards transportation, meals and ensure that our incredible cast and crew are compensated for their artistry. Your generosity is the vital sunlight that will transform our deepest creative impulses into a tangible cinematic experience.
Made of Air (2014) - Paul Clipson
Cemetery of Splendour (2010) - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Taste of Cherry (1997) - Abbas Kiarostami
The Holy Mountain (1973) - Alejandro Jodorowsky
Writer & Director
Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui is a genderqueer, Mauritian-Sikkimese writer and director of Newari and Hakka descent whose work explores identity, memory, and diasporic melancholia through analog photography and experimental narrative film. Their practice centers liminal spaces—geographical, cultural, and emotional—foregrounding the body as a site of transformation and favoring abstraction over linear storytelling.
Their semi-autobiographical short film Moving Room (2024) has screened at independent film festivals across the U.S., including the 2025 National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY), Red Dirt Film Festival, and CineYouth Festival. The film received the New England Local Filmmaker Award at Best of 2024 GRRL HAUS Cinema and was awarded Best Worcester Short Film at the 2025 Massachusetts Independent Film Festival.
Producer
Nicole Overbaugh is a Massachusetts-based producer and multidisciplinary storyteller with a focus on independent film, theater, and photography. Their producing work is rooted in fostering community-driven, collaborative environments and championing sustainable labor practices. Nicole has led the production of several narrative short projects that have screened at festivals across the United States, including Pradhan Wong Ah Sui's Moving Room (2024), bringing a strong creative vision and logistical precision to each stage of the process. In 2023, Nicole co-founded Yonic Production Company, where they specialize in shepherding projects from development through post-production.
Director of Photography
Jonathan “JT” Turner is a Boston-based cinematographer with roots in Mattapan, a neighborhood deeply shaped by the crack epidemic of the late ’80s and ’90s. Growing up in an environment where chaos often overshadowed morality, JT became fascinated by characters trapped in systems too vast or complex to fully grasp. His work explores the quiet tension of survival, identity, and resilience in the face of forces beyond one's control.
JT’s cinematography has appeared in a range of acclaimed projects, including A Father’s Lullaby, an art installation by Rashin Farhandej that premiered at Boston’s ICA in 2019 and was featured at Tribeca Film Festival in 2025; Eternal (dir. Nick Nerolien), which premiered at Newport Beach Film Festival in 2021; Bubbling Over (dir. Lourik Rankin), which screened at the Chelsea Film Festival in 2024; and Moving Room (dir. Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui), which was shown at NFFTY in 2025.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Meals & Crafty
Costs $1,000
This ensures we are able to feed our ten-person crew three meals a day for the duration of our six day production.
Lodging and Location
Costs $4,000
Our lodging space will double as our film location. These funds ensure we can take care of our team and secure a space to do so.
Production Team Compensation
Costs $2,100
We will be compensating a team of six multitalented crew members for their time and travel.
Cast Compensation
Costs $900
We will be compensating a talented cast of four for their time and travel.
Post-Production Compensation
Costs $1,700
We will be compensating a talented team of people in the post production phase, including an editor, VFX supervisor, and composer.
Printing, Material, and Promotion
Costs $400
Including posters, digital promotion, and marketing material to get our film out to the world.
Production Design Expenses
Costs $700
Will cover costume, props, HMU & SFX, and set dressing to transform our actors and our space.
PPE
Costs $100
An allotment of our funds dedicated to providing PPE to our cast and crew during production
Sound
Costs $100
A small portion of our budget provided to our sound mixer for batteries and any additional G&E needs.
Share this update!
About This Team
Writer & Director
Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui is a genderqueer Mauritian-Sikkimese writer and director of Newari and Hakka descent whose work explores identity, memory, and diasporic melancholia through analog photography and experimental narrative film. Their practice centers liminal spaces—geographical, cultural, and emotional—foregrounding the body as a site of transformation and favoring abstraction over linear storytelling.
Their semi-autobiographical short film Moving Room (2024) has screened at independent film festivals across the U.S., including the 2025 National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY), Red Dirt Film Festival, and CineYouth Festival. The film received the New England Local Filmmaker Award at Best of 2024 GRRL HAUS Cinema and was awarded Best Worcester Short Film at the 2025 Massachusetts Independent Film Festival.
Producer
Nicole Overbaugh is a Massachusetts-based producer and multidisciplinary storyteller with a focus on independent film, theater, and photography. Their producing work is rooted in fostering community-driven, collaborative environments and championing sustainable labor practices. Nicole has led the production of several narrative short projects that have screened at festivals across the United States, including Pradhan Wong Ah Sui's Moving Room (2024), bringing a strong creative vision and logistical precision to each stage of the process. In 2023, Nicole co-founded Yonic Production Company, where they specialize in shepherding projects from development through post-production.
Director of Photography
Jonathan “JT” Turner is a Boston-based cinematographer with roots in Mattapan, a neighborhood deeply shaped by the crack epidemic of the late ’80s and ’90s. Growing up in an environment where chaos often overshadowed morality, JT became fascinated by characters trapped in systems too vast or complex to fully grasp. His work explores the quiet tension of survival, identity, and resilience in the face of forces beyond one's control.
JT’s cinematography has appeared in a range of acclaimed projects, including A Father’s Lullaby, an art installation by Rashin Farhandej that premiered at Boston’s ICA in 2019 and was featured at Tribeca Film Festival in 2025; Eternal (dir. Nick Nerolien), which premiered at Newport Beach Film Festival in 2021; Bubbling Over (dir. Lourik Rankin), which screened at the Chelsea Film Festival in 2024; and Moving Room (dir. Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui), which was shown at NFFTY in 2025.
Current Team
Incentives
- The Story
- Wishlist
- Updates
- The Team
- Community
Mission Statement
The Story
Namaste! My name is Gyani, and I’m a Worcester-based filmmaker. Last year, I created a short film called Moving Room, a semi-autobiographical exploration of queerness, diaspora, and adolescent displacement that screened at festivals across the country. Check out the trailer here!
This year, I’m excited to share my new project, Wither & Bloom—a surreal short that continues to explore diasporic identity, gender, and intergenerational care through the lens of magical realism and emotional abstraction.
Wither & Bloom follows a queer immigrant daughter navigating care, identity, and memory after her mother falls into a mysterious coma soon after they migrate to the U.S. When an enigmatic doctor arrives, ritual collides with medicine, and Nihara is drawn into a haunting dreamworld shaped by her mother’s homesickness. As surreal visions of roots, flowers, and shifting bodies unravel around her, Nihara must confront what it means to heal when language, culture, and gender no longer hold steady. Blending horror, magical realism, and intimate abstraction, Wither & Bloom explores the emotional aftershocks of migration and the rituals we create to survive what we cannot name.
This film is for those who’ve left home but still feel it in their bones.
For queer and trans kids raised in silence, searching for language that fits.
For immigrant daughters who became caregivers too soon.
For those who crossed oceans and lost parts of themselves along the way.
For those who live in dreams and wake up with ghosts.
For bodies shaped by absence, and identities still unfolding.
For those still learning how to live, love, and bloom—on new soil.
When I left Sikkim at fifteen to move to the United States, I entered a world that was familiar in language, but alien in feeling. I could speak English, but I couldn’t explain who I was—not to others, and not yet to myself. That first year was marked by an aching silence. I was grieving a version of home that had already begun to slip away, and trying to become someone without knowing what I had left behind.
Wither & Bloom is rooted in that grief. It is shaped by the liminal space between cultures, between genders, between the self I was and the self I’m still becoming. It’s a film that asks what happens when the people we love—our parents, our elders—lose their sense of belonging, and what it means to care for them while still struggling to care for ourselves.
The attacks on migration and the rollbacks of LGBTQ+ rights, under the Trump administration, are an ongoing, daily reality that makes Wither & Bloom an urgent and necessary film. The heightened xenophobia and nationalistic rhetoric impacts lives, and amplifies the already arduous struggle for immigrants to retain their cultural identity while integrating into a new society.
Wither & Bloom delves into homesickness not just as a psychological state, but as a metaphysical one, exploring grief, transformation, and memory through a surreal lens. This takes on an even more poignant layer of meaning when considering the profound psychological toll that discriminatory policies and ongoing hateful rhetoric inflict, turning the very concept of home into a battleground.
This is not a film about answers. It’s an act of quiet resistance, embracing in-betweenness as a place of freedom, recognizing that survival sometimes means invisibility, but not a permanent state.
Nihara – 25, newly arrived in the U.S. with her mother. Sharp, introverted, and quietly overwhelmed. She's navigating the weight of care, culture shock, and identity all at once—without the language to name any of it. She doesn’t think of herself as spiritual…until she has to be.
Aama (Nihara’s Mother) – In her early 50s. Once radiant and rooted, now silent and still. Her homesickness runs so deep it manifests as sleep. In dreams, she walks through fog, roots, and memory—trying to return to something that may no longer exist.
The Doctor – Ageless, polished, and deeply unsettling. Part corporate mouthpiece, part metaphysical oracle. He arrives with contracts, rituals, and riddles, turning diagnosis into a haunting performance. He’s not here to comfort—but maybe, in some way, to transform.
June 2025 - Crowdfunding Kicks Off
July 2025 - Rehearsal, Tech Scouts, Test Shoot
August 2025 - Production
September & October 2025 - Post Production (Editing / Color / Score / Credits)
November 2025 - Festival Submissions
Wither & Bloom is currently blossoming in its pre-production development, cultivated by an exceptional team dedicated to its vision. We've meticulously planned every seed of this project, from a comprehensive budget to our filming schedule and crowdfunding strategy. To truly bring this film to life, securing the necessary funding is crucial. Your support will allow us to uncover unique and resonant locations that breathe life not only into Nihara's journey, but our own team’s as well. Funds will also go towards transportation, meals and ensure that our incredible cast and crew are compensated for their artistry. Your generosity is the vital sunlight that will transform our deepest creative impulses into a tangible cinematic experience.
Made of Air (2014) - Paul Clipson
Cemetery of Splendour (2010) - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Taste of Cherry (1997) - Abbas Kiarostami
The Holy Mountain (1973) - Alejandro Jodorowsky
Writer & Director
Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui is a genderqueer, Mauritian-Sikkimese writer and director of Newari and Hakka descent whose work explores identity, memory, and diasporic melancholia through analog photography and experimental narrative film. Their practice centers liminal spaces—geographical, cultural, and emotional—foregrounding the body as a site of transformation and favoring abstraction over linear storytelling.
Their semi-autobiographical short film Moving Room (2024) has screened at independent film festivals across the U.S., including the 2025 National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY), Red Dirt Film Festival, and CineYouth Festival. The film received the New England Local Filmmaker Award at Best of 2024 GRRL HAUS Cinema and was awarded Best Worcester Short Film at the 2025 Massachusetts Independent Film Festival.
Producer
Nicole Overbaugh is a Massachusetts-based producer and multidisciplinary storyteller with a focus on independent film, theater, and photography. Their producing work is rooted in fostering community-driven, collaborative environments and championing sustainable labor practices. Nicole has led the production of several narrative short projects that have screened at festivals across the United States, including Pradhan Wong Ah Sui's Moving Room (2024), bringing a strong creative vision and logistical precision to each stage of the process. In 2023, Nicole co-founded Yonic Production Company, where they specialize in shepherding projects from development through post-production.
Director of Photography
Jonathan “JT” Turner is a Boston-based cinematographer with roots in Mattapan, a neighborhood deeply shaped by the crack epidemic of the late ’80s and ’90s. Growing up in an environment where chaos often overshadowed morality, JT became fascinated by characters trapped in systems too vast or complex to fully grasp. His work explores the quiet tension of survival, identity, and resilience in the face of forces beyond one's control.
JT’s cinematography has appeared in a range of acclaimed projects, including A Father’s Lullaby, an art installation by Rashin Farhandej that premiered at Boston’s ICA in 2019 and was featured at Tribeca Film Festival in 2025; Eternal (dir. Nick Nerolien), which premiered at Newport Beach Film Festival in 2021; Bubbling Over (dir. Lourik Rankin), which screened at the Chelsea Film Festival in 2024; and Moving Room (dir. Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui), which was shown at NFFTY in 2025.
Wishlist
Use the WishList to Pledge cash and Loan items - or - Make a pledge by selecting an Incentive directly.
Meals & Crafty
Costs $1,000
This ensures we are able to feed our ten-person crew three meals a day for the duration of our six day production.
Lodging and Location
Costs $4,000
Our lodging space will double as our film location. These funds ensure we can take care of our team and secure a space to do so.
Production Team Compensation
Costs $2,100
We will be compensating a team of six multitalented crew members for their time and travel.
Cast Compensation
Costs $900
We will be compensating a talented cast of four for their time and travel.
Post-Production Compensation
Costs $1,700
We will be compensating a talented team of people in the post production phase, including an editor, VFX supervisor, and composer.
Printing, Material, and Promotion
Costs $400
Including posters, digital promotion, and marketing material to get our film out to the world.
Production Design Expenses
Costs $700
Will cover costume, props, HMU & SFX, and set dressing to transform our actors and our space.
PPE
Costs $100
An allotment of our funds dedicated to providing PPE to our cast and crew during production
Sound
Costs $100
A small portion of our budget provided to our sound mixer for batteries and any additional G&E needs.
Share this update!
About This Team
Writer & Director
Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui is a genderqueer Mauritian-Sikkimese writer and director of Newari and Hakka descent whose work explores identity, memory, and diasporic melancholia through analog photography and experimental narrative film. Their practice centers liminal spaces—geographical, cultural, and emotional—foregrounding the body as a site of transformation and favoring abstraction over linear storytelling.
Their semi-autobiographical short film Moving Room (2024) has screened at independent film festivals across the U.S., including the 2025 National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY), Red Dirt Film Festival, and CineYouth Festival. The film received the New England Local Filmmaker Award at Best of 2024 GRRL HAUS Cinema and was awarded Best Worcester Short Film at the 2025 Massachusetts Independent Film Festival.
Producer
Nicole Overbaugh is a Massachusetts-based producer and multidisciplinary storyteller with a focus on independent film, theater, and photography. Their producing work is rooted in fostering community-driven, collaborative environments and championing sustainable labor practices. Nicole has led the production of several narrative short projects that have screened at festivals across the United States, including Pradhan Wong Ah Sui's Moving Room (2024), bringing a strong creative vision and logistical precision to each stage of the process. In 2023, Nicole co-founded Yonic Production Company, where they specialize in shepherding projects from development through post-production.
Director of Photography
Jonathan “JT” Turner is a Boston-based cinematographer with roots in Mattapan, a neighborhood deeply shaped by the crack epidemic of the late ’80s and ’90s. Growing up in an environment where chaos often overshadowed morality, JT became fascinated by characters trapped in systems too vast or complex to fully grasp. His work explores the quiet tension of survival, identity, and resilience in the face of forces beyond one's control.
JT’s cinematography has appeared in a range of acclaimed projects, including A Father’s Lullaby, an art installation by Rashin Farhandej that premiered at Boston’s ICA in 2019 and was featured at Tribeca Film Festival in 2025; Eternal (dir. Nick Nerolien), which premiered at Newport Beach Film Festival in 2021; Bubbling Over (dir. Lourik Rankin), which screened at the Chelsea Film Festival in 2024; and Moving Room (dir. Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui), which was shown at NFFTY in 2025.