“When I told my students to research a festival they weren’t familiar with, a nine-year-old Ugandan girl stood up and said she didn’t need to learn about others’ cultures,” says Sen, whose film was screened at DPS International, Saket. “That’s when I decided to make this short drama.”

The Peace Tree, which won 12 awards, including the Liv Ullmann Peace Prize at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and the Children’s International Jury Prize at the Cairo Film Festival, is the story of seven-year-old classmates Shazia Jamal and Kylie Jenkins. Shazia is a Muslim from Pakistan while Kylie is a Caucasian Christian. Kylie likes the riot of colours on Eid — mehndi, multicoloured bangles and sequined lehngas, while Shazia dreams of Santa Claus showering her with gifts on Christmas. While the parents of both girls disapprove and view the cultural differences with suspicion, the girls build what they call a peace tree, actually a Christmas tree with baubles and bells giving way to the crescent, the swastika, the cross and the Star of David — each symbolising a different faith.

Multiculturalism is a favourite with Sen. Her 1996 film Just a Little Red Dot is about how Caucasian girls fight racism when they are called names for sporting a bindi. Indians are taking to the concept of a Peace Tree. The DPS peace tree — which will come up on October 2 (Gandhi Jayanti) instead of June 1 (as is the case in Canada — won’t have a cross or a Vietnamese hat. It’ll have symbols representing different states, like Qutab Minar made of foam for Delhi or a Puri Temple in clay for Orissa. Students of Kolkata’s Laxmipati Singhania School, where the film was earlier screened, have also made a peace tree, embellished with motifs representing different states, with a Styrofoam Taj Mahal for Uttar Pradesh.