IMFF '25: Sad Letters of an Imaginary Woman: Depersonalization as Relief

There is an incredible trend that has been unfolding for the last few years, and it has accelerated more recently. We are in the midst of a wave of tense, feminist indie horror in South Asian cinema. Sad Letters of an Imaginary Woman (SLIW), released in 2024 and screened at Indie Meme Fest 2025, is psychological horror at the level of identity and is certainly part of this deeply interesting group.

The film follows protagonist Nidhi, eponymous with writer-director Nidhi Saxena, as she confronts her paternal traumas. She shares a house with her mother and the house, a representation of their shared life, is dilapidated and leaking. Less of a narrative and more of a standing metaphor, the film takes an artistic approach. We essentially enter into Nidhi’s haunted gestalt and join in the cacophony of memories, thoughts, regrets, and traumas. It’s an approach that this film shares with Mirror (1975), although SLIW differs from Tarkovsky’s significantly in that its intention is to maintain a singular focus on Nidhi’s paternal traumas, rather than speaking about life as a nuanced admixture of different experiences and attitudes.

The central theme of this film appears to be people being trapped by the forces that shaped them. They struggle to break out of old patterns and hate themselves for continuing them. Nidhi’s father has an especially ugly episode in one memory where he humiliates and beats her, afterward talking to himself with believable self loathing. Nidhi’s mother cheats on her father and young Nidhi spreads the rumors in another memory. Why do we do what we do? Why is the sum of two and two, four? Triumph in this case would be for these characters to claim agency over themselves and their lives. But when a voice comes to Nidhi we realize this is not a story of triumph. The voice tells her about a way to vanish, the blank neutrality of nothingness preferable to a life trapped in this house, driven by these forces.

While certain elements of the film seem heavy handed, this ending is a satisfying thematic resolution to the challenging emotions expressed by the film’s central metaphor. Satisfying like watching those ASMR videos of layered bath bombs dissolving in a filled tub. Satisfying in the same way Bresson was. Satisfying like learning about the three categories of desire in Buddhist philosophy: sensory pleasure, self affirmation and self dissolution. That third desire is what you might express when you drink to black out. And it’s what Nidhi acts on to resolve the core tension in SLIW—the tension between wanting to move forward and being fettered by trauma. Her desire to vanish also reflects a tendency for depersonalization,  the flip side of derealization. If derealization is when the subject feels that the world around them is insubstantive then depersonalization is when the subject feels that the world around them is real while they themselves are insubstantive. So Nidhi’s tendency to depersonalize might be rooted in an imbalance favoring the desire for self dissolution. 

Yeah. This shit is bleak. And it’s about time horror as a genre addressed it. I don’t know how many more evil dolls or haunted houses I’ve got left in me, y’all. I stopped wondering if vampires might be real when I was eight, so they don’t make me uncomfortable. In this world void of abstracts, in the desert of the real, the only horror left is life. Real life. You want horror? You need the bleakness of reality. Existential horror is the only game in town.

Nidhi Saxena’s feature debut is the latest entry in this welcome trend. Everyone should be interested to see how her style evolves moving into the future. By showcasing her competence with metaphor, symbolism and clarity, this film has something to deliver that’s both interesting and original—empathy for those who crave nothingness.

In celebration of the South Asians taking on the horror genre with fresh new eyes, we should recognize some others:

• Sister Midnight (2025), dir. Karan Kandhari

• Bhootpori (2024), dir. Soukarya Ghosal

• In Flames (2023), dir. Zarrar Kahn, which was also screened at IMFF this year

• Moshari (2022), dir. Nuhash Humayun

• Chatur Mukham (2021), dir. Ranjeet Kamal Sarkar and Salil V

• Devi (2020), dir. Priyanka Bannerjee

• Maadathy: An Unfairy Tale (2019), dir. Leena Manimekalai

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