India, Aug. 31 -- Beauty and terror clash in Nidhi Saxena's arresting sophomore feature, Secret of a Mountain Serpent, which opened the Biennale College Cinema section at the Venice Film Festival this year. Set in a remote Himalayan town during the Kargil War of the late 1990s, this film chronicles the lives of women who are left behind. In a village emptied of men, these women live with the emptiness of something waiting to happen. Their loneliness, yearning and desire are delicately drawn out to form a mythical mood poem of sorts, one that is steeped in local folklore.

The saying goes that a woman encountered a snake in the river and made a promise that she ultimately did not keep. The snake is still waiting in the river, and the women...