A Circle as the Center of the Whole

The film approaches the city of Delhi as a site excavated by history, ideology and the act of remembrance itself. Fragments from state records, mythic narratives and personal memory construct a speculative archive that disrupts any attempts at fixing the city’s identity as a monolith.
The figure of a demolished mosque looms over a present-day excavation, as a childhood encounter with loss takes the shape of a hole in the ground. Archaeology functions as both method and metaphor, through which A Circle as the Center of the Whole examines cycles of discovery and erasure implicit in personal and political claims over the city, reimagining its terrain through detours. What emerges is an alternate historiography marked by ruptures, which asks how absence comes to organize memory and space.

Utkarsh is an artist and filmmaker from Delhi whose practice investigates how the visible world is constructed and remembered, exploring the optical and archival processes that shape memory and identity. His films have been shown at the Berlinale, FICUNAM, EXiS and Rencontres Paris/Berlin. A recipient of the Flaherty Film Seminar Fellowship, his writings on film and photography have been published in The Caravan Magazine and STIRworld. He holds a master’s degree in film/video from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2024, he was part of Forum Expanded with the film Remote Occlusions.

Director Utkarsh. Cinematography Utkarsh. Editing Utkarsh. Music Lani.akea. Sound Design Utkarsh. Animation Utkarsh. Sound Mixing Aidan Reynolds. Producer Utkarsh. Production company Utkarsh (Los Angeles, USA). With Utkarsh.

Films: 2024: Remote Occlusions (Forum Expanded 2024). 2026: A Circle as the Center of the Whole.