Kathmandu, March 4 -- A staircase, stained, narrow, and smelling of neglect. A mother covers her nose before stepping inside what is supposed to be her family's new beginning.

'Prawasi Jiwan' opens with discomfort. The film frames migration as arrival into uncertainty. It is dedicated to immigrants and to those lost to mental illness, and that dedication shapes its emotional core.

Mental health, rarely centred in Nepali cinema, is one of the film's primary concerns. The story is structured around therapy sessions: a hesitant refugee, Prayash, sits across from a therapist played by Rajesh Hamal, unsure whether to speak. That detail matters. For a Bhutanese Nepali refugee, seeking therapy is itself an act of rupture from silence, from sti...