E360 Film Contest
In “Chasing Birds” — Second-Place Winner of the 2025 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest — filmmaker Salma Sultana Barbhuiya explores how Rustom Basumatary, who came of age during a time of violent conflict in the Indian state of Assam, found identity and purpose in nature.
2025 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest
In the late 1980s, the Indigenous Bodo people, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, intensified their advocacy for political and cultural autonomy. Militants took up arms, looting and carrying out assassinations. As authorities cracked down, many Bodo settled in Manas National Park, a 330-square-mile World Heritage site, where they cleared forest and poached wildlife.
During this turbulent period, the Bodo boy Rustom Basumatary hid and hunted small game inside the park. But as the violence receded, he began to spend more time in the forest, closely studying its birdlife. Says filmmaker Salma Sultana Barbhuiya, “The jungle offered him something the outside world could not: peace, wonder, and a sense of belonging.”
In 2003, Basumatary got involved with the Manas Maozigendri Ecotourism Society, which promotes conservation, ecotourism, and community development. He continued to hone his birding skills and eventually became a much-requested park guide. “Chasing Birds” tells Basumatary’s story while celebrating the revival of this biodiversity hotspot and the power of community-based conservation to help heal broken ecosystems and lives.
About the Filmmaker: Salma Sultana is a wildlife biologist and filmmaker from Assam, India. She holds a master’s degree in environmental biology and wildlife sciences, and works at the intersection of research and visual storytelling. Salma turned to filmmaking as a way to share the stories she encountered in the field.
About the Contest: Now in its 12th season, the Yale Environment 360 Film Contest honors the year’s best environmental documentaries, with the aim of recognizing work that has not previously been widely seen. This year we received 613 submissions from more than 80 countries across six continents, with the winners selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert, Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Thomas Lennon, and e360’s editor-in-chief Roger Cohn.