The Fisherman and the Banker

The Fisherman and the Banker is a modern-day David and Goliath tale, chronicling a fishing community in India’s Gulf of Kutch as they take on the World Bank’s private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), for funding a coal-fired power plant that threatens their way of life. Filmed over a decade, the documentary captures the fishermen’s fight against industrial encroachment and their alliance with US lawyers to file a groundbreaking lawsuit, which reaches the US Supreme Court in 2018. With a poetic and observational lens, the film explores their legal battle and profound bond with the environment, posing a powerful question: can the resilience of a community rewrite the rules of global power—or will the might of corporations and institutions crush their fight for justice?

Sheena is a British-Gujarati filmmaker with a background in economics and political economy from Cambridge University and SOAS, whose work explores social justice through storytelling. Her debut feature, Even the Crows: A Divided Gujarat, examined the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. Rooted in her British- Asian heritage, Sheena’s films connect local struggles to global power structures, blending poetic and observational styles to amplify marginalised voices and highlight resistance, identity, and community.