The story of Mrinalini, a sensuous, young Indian woman, warrior, and lover, whose two parallel lives — one in India bound by tradition, the other forging ahead through resistance and brutal survival — merge into a singular journey of resilience, self-reclamation, and manifestation of the Divine Feminine.
‘“She is very beautiful, but she’s nongra,” I overheard my grandmother say in Bengali. Nongra means soiled, or dark-skinned. I was 5. Marred by those words, my journey began.’
- Manoshi Chitra Neogy,
Blood Words: A Warrior’s Walk
Creator, Writer & Director
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Blood Words: A Warrior’s Walk
Creator, Writer & Director
SYNOPSIS
Blood Words: A Warrior’s Walk is a feature-length narrative drama embodying the cry of the wounded Divine Feminine through the story of Mrinalini, a sensuous young Indian woman living two parallel lives — one bound by tradition, the other forging a path of liberation.
In India, she remains in an upper-class Brahmanical household, suffocated by rigid rituals, cultural hypocrisy, and a mother-in-law who loathes her dark skin and untamed spirit. Her artistic expression is stifled; her worth reduced to obedience and silence. In the other life, she chooses freedom, crossing continents to survive as a performer and nomad. From modeling to acting to work in a high-end massage parlor, she navigates spaces that prize visibility but commodify her body. Exploited, betrayed, and assaulted, she refuses to surrender her voice, vitality, or sensual power.
Though outwardly different, both lives are bound by racism, sexism, and erasure — and by an awakening warrior spirit. Myth, memory, and mysticism entwine as the two selves appear to one another in moments of crisis, guiding each other toward resilience and wholeness. By the film’s end, the binary dissolves: there is no woman who left and one who stayed, only one self — scarred but sovereign, sensual and whole. Blood Words is not a story of victimhood, but of reclamation, artistry, and power. It speaks to the universal journey of women who refuse to be contained.
Blood Words Vignette available upon request
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Through its bold artistry, Blood Words fearlessly immerses viewers in an unflinching, sensual world — a visceral fusion of the sacred and the erotic, echoing the powerful allure of the Kama Sutra. But beneath this sensual tapestry lies a deeply urgent story: in a time when immigrants are destabilized and silenced, this film gives voice to a narrative too often overshadowed. Told entirely through the female gaze, Blood Words is both a cry of resistance and a hymn of reclamation — a third-culture perspective that insists on beauty, power, and belonging in a world determined to deny it.
The theme of the film is rooted in my own journey as a South Asian woman and artist navigating between cultures and breaking the boundaries imposed upon me. Raised between East Africa and India, my upbringing was informed by rigid cultural constraints that suffocated my self-expression. When I followed the seduction of the West and its mirage of creative possibilities, I was confronted instead with the ignorance, mediocrity and lies that were hidden behind a facade of superficiality. I realized then that my creative cry was my weapon against all those who tried to smother and silence me. After many bloody battles where I fought against compromising my own truths, I arrived at a merging point, where both cultures meet to create a brilliant new hue of its own. This film is an emanation of those many shades. Like my past work, which won accolades at major festivals including Sundance, Toronto and Berlin International Film Festivals, Blood Words emerges directly from my lived experience - a deeply personal cry for truth, beauty and freedom.
I see cinema as a lucid dream where all expressions come from an inner tapestry of knowing, feeling, sacrifice and compassion. I seek to make visible the invisible world through observing and absorbing all that is around me without any masks, pretensions, arrogance or vanity. It is the true listening of the human cry. Cinema is my blood sword through which I express and show the quivering leaf upon which sits a palace of pearls.
The theme of the film is rooted in my own journey as a South Asian woman and artist navigating between cultures and breaking the boundaries imposed upon me. Raised between East Africa and India, my upbringing was informed by rigid cultural constraints that suffocated my self-expression. When I followed the seduction of the West and its mirage of creative possibilities, I was confronted instead with the ignorance, mediocrity and lies that were hidden behind a facade of superficiality. I realized then that my creative cry was my weapon against all those who tried to smother and silence me. After many bloody battles where I fought against compromising my own truths, I arrived at a merging point, where both cultures meet to create a brilliant new hue of its own. This film is an emanation of those many shades. Like my past work, which won accolades at major festivals including Sundance, Toronto and Berlin International Film Festivals, Blood Words emerges directly from my lived experience - a deeply personal cry for truth, beauty and freedom.
I see cinema as a lucid dream where all expressions come from an inner tapestry of knowing, feeling, sacrifice and compassion. I seek to make visible the invisible world through observing and absorbing all that is around me without any masks, pretensions, arrogance or vanity. It is the true listening of the human cry. Cinema is my blood sword through which I express and show the quivering leaf upon which sits a palace of pearls.
Cinema is my samurai sword.
manoshichitraneogy@gmail.com
(917) 685-8569
A film
A mission
An awakening
A language of vision
A LIVING MEDICINE
“I will only make love with poet men.”© Wolf Woman Productions, Inc.
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