A film by Niharika Chauhan; Music by Dee En
Dreamers of Prettier Beings is a five-minute short film shot during the Goa monsoon. It follows the humdrum patterns and rhythms of domestic life as a lover sings about his muse. The director of the film, Niharika Chauhan appears as the muse, and the camera holds the close connection and observation of this gaze, the slow mundane that only a lover can appreciate, where the banality of the frame becomes beauty.
Chauhan turns the camera back on herself repositioning the muse as the maker, the quiet inspiration for music and life. The dulcet tones of the song carry the visuals through certain rituals of her everyday. Yet the everyday also churns and holds anxiety, and routines become a way to distract, to centre, or to keep a rhythm going, while the mind unravels. In this quietude, there lies contradiction and discomfort.
As the project note states: Instead of encountering the filmmaker as an ideal shaped by someone else’s gaze, we see her within the ordinary textures of daily life, inhabiting her own space. The vantage point changes, but the longing remains. As part of the world of Dee En’s second EP Saturn Return, a project shaped by personal transition, the film revisits that emotional landscape with distance.
Niharika Chauhan writes: What remains of a dream when it returns to the body it belongs to? This film began with that question. When I heard Dreamers of Prettier Beings, a song my partner wrote, I was struck by its tenderness. It imagines a lover as an ethereal figure, a “free bird” he feels compelled to release. It is a gaze rooted in affection, yet shaped by an ideal: beautiful, unburdened, self-possessed, drifting just outside the frame of ordinary life. I didn’t want to correct that gaze when I began working. I wanted to reposition it, to ask what happens when this imagined “prettier being” is brought back to the ground.
About the Artists:
Niharika Chauhan is a Goa-based visual artist whose practice traces themes of loss, transition, and the shifting idea of home. Moving through film, photography, and printmaking, her work examines how belonging is made and unmade through migration, displacement, and gendered relationships with the natural world. She received the PhMuseum New Generation Award in 2026, and her work has been exhibited at the Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa Open Arts Festival, Angkor Photo Festival, and Gallery Espace, among others.
Dee En was conceived by Saurav, Ashrey & Aditya during their college days in Delhi. They captured the attention of India’s independent music scene with their debut EPs Whoopsie Daisy & Poppin admired for its dream-like ambience, ‘timeless’ essence, and fresh arrangements, by publications such as Mixmag Asia, Rolling Stones India, Red Bull, and Wild City. Their more recent release, Saturn Return, featured collaborations with Sijya, Rohit Gupta (Peter Cat Recording Co), and Arpan Kumar (Green Park). Singles Darling and Troglodyte were featured on Apple Music’s Breaking Indian Independent and Rinse FM, while Mixmag praised the record for “carving a niche with its unique blend of lo-fi haze and psychedelic soundscapes.”
Film Credits:
Director: Niharika Chauhan
Music: Dee En
Colour: Ashrey Goel
Title Design: Yuvaan Makar
Find us:
Niharika Chauhan: instagram.com/niharikaa.chauhaan
Dee En: instagram.com/deeeeend