MOVING ROOM

Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui

In Moving Room, director Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui crafts a deeply personal and visually poetic portrait of cultural dislocation, identity, and self-liberation. Centered on Karma, a high school student from Sikkim navigating assimilation in a new country, the film explores the tension between belonging and staying true to oneself. Through surreal storytelling and bold visual choices, Moving Room brings visibility to often-unseen diasporic and queer experiences.
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Read about the inspiration behind the film, Gyani’s creative process, and how memory, migration, and multiplicity continue to shape their work.

Gyani received our 2024 New England Local Filmmaker Award, sponsored by High Output.

Moving Room explores the struggle between cultural identity and assimilation. How does Karma’s experience reflect the broader challenges faced by young immigrants?

Karma’s journey encapsulates the emotional and psychological turbulence of young immigrants of color, much like what I experienced when I first moved to the United States. Leaving home at a formative age, he faces the pressure to assimilate while trying to hold onto his cultural identity. His interactions with Alex—marked by microaggressions and coercion—highlight the subtle yet persistent forces that push immigrants toward erasing parts of themselves to fit in.

Living with host families meant constantly adapting—not just to a new country, but to different cultural microcosms within each home. I entered those spaces as a perpetual guest, never truly belonging, learning to take up less space, remain quiet, and code-switch as a survival mechanism. This mirrors the reality for many young immigrants who are expected to conform in order to be accepted.
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Karma is a reflection of the inhibition, diffidence, and repression I carried as a young migrant—often without realizing what I was sacrificing in my efforts to feel included in white suburbia. Moving Room speaks to the broader diasporic struggle of self-definition in the face of external pressures, a challenge that is deeply personal yet universally felt.

The Bodhisattva appears as a spiritual, genderless figure. What does this character symbolize in Karma’s journey, and how does their presence contrast with Alex’s influence?
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The Bodhisattva’s relationship to Karma mirrors my relationship to my past self. They  represent self-liberation—an existence free from past traumas, societal expectations, and rigid identities. Unlike Alex, who embodies the pressures of assimilation and performative belonging, the Bodhisattva offers an alternative path, existing beyond binaries of gender and culture. Their presence reflects Karma’s internal space, where he can reclaim agency and embrace fluidity.

This character is deeply personal, shaped by my journey of navigating identity. Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness teachings helped me face existential dread with compassion, while Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of nationalism freed me from the exhausting need to belong to one place. Coming out as non-binary reinforced my belief in multiplicity—belonging to many places yet to none at once.

The Bodhisattva also serves as a bridge to ancestral wisdom, adorned in traditional Newari garb, tracing my lineage from the Kathmandu Valley to Sikkim. They embody a history of migration and adaptation, mirroring Karma’s search for home. Growing up, I rarely saw stories reflecting my identity, queerness, or diasporic experience. Moving Room seeks to change that, offering a narrative where belonging isn’t about choosing between worlds but embracing in-betweenness as a place of freedom.

Moving Room is a semi-autobiographical film. What was the process of dramatizing your own past experiences like, and did it change how you view them?

Dramatizing my past experiences was both cathartic and challenging. In addition to deep introspection, I found that talk therapy and meditation helped me reevaluate and rewrite the oppressive narratives I had unconsciously internalized. Revisiting moments of isolation, self-doubt, and cultural dislocation was not just about reflection—it was about reclaiming agency over memories that once felt insurmountable.

As I shaped Karma’s journey, I came to see the film as an act of transformation rather than just documentation. The surreal elements in Moving Room, like the presence of the Bodhisattva, act as interruptions to linear time, much like how memory itself folds, distorts, and resurfaces in unexpected ways.

In revisiting my past, I was also forced to reckon with the ways I had subconsciously adapted to whiteness, and masculinity as they existed in an American framework. Writing Moving Room made me more aware of what I had sacrificed for inclusion, how cultural erasure was not always explicit but embedded in the micro-adjustments I made every day. It was through making this film that I was able to extend compassion to my younger self, recognizing that survival sometimes meant invisibility—but that invisibility does not have to be a permanent state.

What do you hope audiences, particularly those who have experienced cultural displacement, take away from Moving Room?
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At a representational level, I hope that those who have experienced cultural displacement see themselves reflected in Moving Room and feel a sense of validation in their own experiences. The film does not offer easy resolutions but instead embraces the complexity of existing between worlds. I want viewers to walk away knowing that the feeling of being untethered is not a personal failing but a shared experience—one that many of us carry as we navigate identity, belonging, and home.

However, my intention goes beyond representation. I want the audience to not only see themselves in the characters but to resonate with the film’s sensory language—the textures, rhythms, and abstractions that shape its world. Through movement, sound, and the materiality of the medium, I hope to evoke a feeling that transcends words, allowing viewers to find connection not just in the story itself, but in the way it is told.

Do you see yourself continuing to explore themes of diaspora, identity, and memory in future projects?

Absolutely. Themes of diaspora, identity, and memory are at the core of my practice—they shape how I see the world and how I express myself through art.

I’m currently working on two projects that continue this exploration. Wither & Bloom is my upcoming experimental short fiction film, now in development. It weaves migration and gender identity into a surreal, dreamlike narrative. I envision it as a genderqueer allegory—where displacement becomes an existential condition that distorts time, fractures identity, and blurs the boundary between waking and dreaming. We’re planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign this May.

My first solo exhibition, Fogbound, will open at the Harold Stevens Gallery at WCUW 91.3FM in Worcester, MA, with a reception on Wednesday, April 23rd from 6–8PM. The project is a meditation on returning to Sikkim after years away, expressed through black-and-white analog photography. It’s a quiet reflection on the spiritual dissonance of homecoming and has been in the making for nearly two years.
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Across film, photography, and other mediums, I’m committed to exploring the liminal spaces we occupy—physically, emotionally, spiritually. My goal is to keep pushing the boundaries of narrative and visual storytelling to create work that is intimate, immersive, and resonant.

Image from Fogbound photo series. Fogbound will be exhibited at the Harold Stevens Gallery at WCUW Opening Reception on Wednesday April 23rd 2025 from 6PM-8PM.

Gyani Pradhan Wong Ah Sui is a non-binary, queer Mauritian-Sikkimese filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist whose work delves into the intersections of identity, memory, and belonging. Drawing from their lived experiences as an immigrant navigating the complexities of home, cultural dislocation, and gender identity, their art explores themes of diasporic melancholia, repressed identity, and spiritual reconnection. Through analog photography and experimental fiction film, they create emotionally resonant pieces that reflect the fluidity of both gender and cultural belonging.

Their short film Moving Room will screen on April 24th at 7PM during Opening Night of the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival, where it has been nominated for Best Short Film and Best Worcester County Short Film. It will also screen on April 26th at 9PM as part of the Experimental Block at the CineYouth Festival in Chicago.
Their debut solo gallery exhibition, Fogbound, opens with a reception on Wednesday, April 23rd at 6PM at the Harold Stevens Gallery – WCUW 91.3FM in Worcester, MA. Fogbound is a photographic series developed as a meditative exercise, illuminating their shifting spiritual connection to Sikkim upon returning home six years after their departure as a teenager.