Most films leave behind something. A copy, a script, a mention in the records. Sitara does not exist. No archives list it. No surviving crew members speak of it. It is a film that was never finished—never made, if you believe the official accounts. And yet, every few years, something appears. A reel, misplaced in the wrong storage vault. A flickering clip uploaded to an obscure forum before vanishing without a trace. A theater technician in Pune, 2003, swearing he found a single canister in a condemned projection booth before it disappeared overnight. A university researcher in Kolkata, 2011, who claims he saw footage of Maya Kapoor in a private collector’s archive—but the footage was not from any known film.
Earlier this year, an anonymous post surfaced on an old Bollywood memorabilia forum. The user, now deleted, claimed to have acquired an unmarked reel at an estate sale in Mumbai. No labels, no studio markings. But a strip of tape on the canister lid had a single word, smudged with age.
Sitara.
The post was taken down within hours. No archive lists the film. No collector claims to own it.
But still, sometimes, projectionists swear they hear a reel spinning on its own.
And if you ever find an unmarked canister in a forgotten storage room, if the label is old and yellowed, if the ink is smudged but you can just barely make out a name—
Do not watch it.
Because if you do, you might not notice at first. Not in the first scene, not in the second.
But eventually, in the background of a mirror, in the faintest reflection—
She will see you, too.
