Mahesh Subramaniam

Constructing Delusions

Tomorrow Morning, I’m Leaving

A hybrid film taking place on a man’s last day in Bengaluru, where he had lived for years but never quite called home

Mahesh Subramaniam

Writer and filmmaker Mahesh Subramaniam’s practice spans experimental documentary, short fiction, and installation based on research, rumor, and invention. Raised on folktales and half-remembered films, he works in the overlooked places where myth enters ordinary life.

His project Tomorrow Morning, I’m Leaving is a hybrid film taking place on a man’s last day in Bengaluru, where he had lived for years but never quite called home. Before leaving for good, he borrows a ritual from a neighborhood glass workshop: carrying a small mirror to the places and people he is about to lose, hoping the glass will hold what he could not. But the mirror gives back a city he was never fully let into and everything that was almost his. Told through fragments of still images and voiceover reflections, the film blends documentary and fiction, drawing from the filmmaker’s own time in the city.

Forecast Festival 2026, Radialsystem, Berlin. Photo: Camille Blake

Artist and filmmaker Keren Cytter will accompany  Subramaniam as he develops his film project. The work will be presented at the Berlinische Galerie in late November 2026 as part of the artists’ joint residency.

Cytter said: “I chose Mahesh Subramaniam because of his story about a man who leaves mirrors throughout a city, with each mirror functioning as a device that captures the memory of the space it reflects. The premise recalls the work of Jorge Luis Borges in its exploration of recollection, space, and multiplicity. As the mirrors absorb the memories of different people, the narrative shifts across languages and landscapes, as if the mirrors were cameras recording the passage of time itself. Fittingly, the Hindi word ‘kal’ means both ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’, collapsing past and future into a single realm. This concept, together with Subramaniam’s openness to further developing the work, is what excites me about continuing to collaborate with and support him on this project.”