Yogesh Lohan's Fireflies in the Dark (Enoong Ngallamdai) follows a handful of central characters as they escape from violence and navigate through the wreckage of burnt homes and separated families. In these fictionalized stories, Lohan narratively confronts the ethnic conflict in Manipur that started in 2023 between the predominantly Hindu Meitei and the mostly Christian Kuki-Zo minority.
Fireflies in the Dark evokes the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions for its focus on the ethnic conflict that erupted in the Indian state of Manipur. Lohan's central focus, evidenced by a voiceover that he includes in the opening scene, is the kind of damage that hate can do, and the kind of violent hate that humanity is capable of.
The film opens by following Chanbi, played by Bala Hijam Ningthoujam, a heavily pregnant woman in a small village in Manipur, and her fisherman husband. Lohan lets viewers spend the first few minutes with them, seeing the husband fish and feed their cows and seeing them together at home. Then, at about seven minutes in, their reality shifts: there are people coming through town with torches who are burning down houses, and they have to flee, immediately.
Sudden life-altering moments like this are not uncommon in Fireflies in the Dark. We see the same with our other protagonists, like Lingjel, who saves five students from a mob in her village and then leaves with her brother to help people displaced from their homes, until a tragedy strikes in the film's final minutes. We also follow a young boy who is left at a refugee camp, desperately looking for his parents.
Lohan is swift to remind viewers of humans' capacity for kindness as well as hate and suffering. While a mob of men chase after Lingjel and her brother as they move the students to a safer place, a group of older women joins and pushes back against the men. We also see two women who are medically treating people at the refugee camp check in on the boy, accompanying him and making sure he gets medical care. Finally, it is another fisherman who takes in Chanbi and her husband and uses his boat to transport them to safety.
Fireflies in the Dark tells a collection of stories imagined from within the Manipur crisis with care and complexity. Lohan shows that while anger destroys, genuine kindness and help repairs.