Nandita Chakraborty: How an Indo-Australian Filmmaker Is Using Food to Tell the Real Story of Migration With Shared Table: Regional Heroes, Melbourne-based filmmaker Nandita Chakraborty turns kitchens and shared meals into a lens on migration, identity and belonging—bringing the often-overlooked stories of regional Australia’s migrant communities to audiences in Australia, India and beyond. Food is often the first thing migrants carry with them when almost everything else has to be rebuilt. A recipe can survive a border crossing. A spice mixture can outlive a house. A family dish can connect a child born overseas with grandparents they may barely know. For Nandita Chakraborty, that idea became the foundation for Shared Table: Regional Heroes, an Australian documentary that uses food not simply as a subject, but as a way into the much larger questions of migration, memory, identity and belonging. The Melbourne-based Indian-Australian filmmaker’s documentary premiered in the international competition section of the 2026 Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF), where it was the only Australian film selected. It was subsequently acquired by Cinépolis India for a limited theatrical release in India. That journey—from regional Victoria to Mumbai and now to audiences in New Zealand—makes Shared Table particularly relevant to the global
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