A San Francisco teenager who spent her formative years in Delhi made a film for her school project that conveys a simple message for India: Celebrate differences and be together.

The film by Zara Bharadwaj, 17, is a reminder that there is much that binds people together instead of tearing them apart, “through fear, misinformation, and narratives that pit people against one another”.

“One of the great challenges of our times is that we are forgetting how to see each other as humans. Social media, which was once supposed to connect us, now amplifies rage,” Zara told Metro during a special screening of her film in Calcutta recently.

She was in the city for a day, her first visit to Calcutta, where her mother grew up. Zara moved to Palo Alto in the US in Grade IX.

“We begin to fear those who are different by race, religion, politics, gender, or belief. As technology has advanced, humanity has regressed. We are the ones who can break the cycle,” she said.

Together We Rise is a 10-minute film shot in Delhi and Jaipur that captures the diversity of India’s people and their customs.

A still from the film

The Class XII student envisions an India without boundaries between people, “where difference isn’t a reason to divide, but a reason to come closer.”

“If divisions can spread through stories, so can hope,” said Zara, betraying maturity beyond her age.

“Young people can become authentic storytellers of empathy in their communities. This can shift the conversation from division to connection and remind us there is infinitely more that connects us than divides us. Before we are any race, religion, gender, or social class, we are humans,” she said in Calcutta.

Zara, in the film, tells the story of a Muslim man residing in South Delhi who rises to protest the demolition of a temple with help from a childhood friend who is a Hindu.

Such stories of hope abound in many neighbourhoods in the country, in its lanes and bylanes, where people remain quiet rather than making a hullabaloo.

Together We Rise is not just a film but a movement, and the banner under which the Grade XII girl is doing her work and creating peace ambassadors.

“We have designed school workshops where students share their inclusion stories.... To scale impact, we have launched a youth ambassador programme and trained ambassadors to lead kindness workshops in their communities,” she said.

There are 6,000 students between the ages of 13 and 17, not just learning about empathy, but practising and spreading the message and turning isolated acts of kindness into a movement.

Her aim, she says in the film, is to build a student-led movement that transforms polarisation into empathy.

The film screening and a panel discussion were organised by Faces (Friends of Alumni/Alumnae of Colleges, Educational Institutes and Schools).

“Films like these need to be highlighted and brought to the public eye. If we see what is happening around the world, we must have global ambassadors of peace, where work that is being done is more deep-rooted and not on the surface,” said Imran Zaki, president, Faces.