Kothanodi

Kothanodi braids together stories that Assamese children grow up hearing from their grandmothers: Tejimola, Champawati, Ou Kuwori (the Outenga Maiden) and Tawoir Xadhu.

In one village a woman who hates her stepdaughter plots the girl's murder while her husband is away on business. On his travels the husband meets a woman who has given birth to an outenga, an elephant apple that rolls after her wherever she goes, and he sets out to learn the fruit's secret. In another village a rich woman marries her daughter to a python, with terrible consequences. And elsewhere a mother named Malati tries to save her newborn from her husband and his uncle, who have already sacrificed her three earlier children, and in doing so uncovers a shocking truth.

The film turns the familiar fables on their heads, giving the female characters, so often cast as villains in the old versions, new and unsettling readings.

Hazarika, who wrote and directed, has described the film as a dark and moody narrative offering alternate interpretations of the characters in these well-known tales, especially the women. The screenplay is credited to him and the writer Arupa Kalita Patangia.

Shooting took place in 2014 over two schedules on Majuli, the great river island, and along the banks of the Brahmaputra near Dergaon. Between the two schedules the filmmakers raised money through a crowdfunding campaign on the Wishberry platform, which became one of the most successful in the platform's history. The cast is led by Seema Biswas, Adil Hussain, Zerifa Wahid, Urmila Mahanta, Kopil Bora and Asha Bordoloi.

Kothanodi received the Asian Cinema Fund's Post Production Fund Award in 2015 and had its first screening at the 20th Busan International Film Festival that October. In April 2016 it was named Best Feature Film in Assamese at the 63rd National Film Awards.

The film introduced Hazarika as a filmmaker able to make folklore feel contemporary and frightening, a direction he would continue with Aamis (2019).