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For her latest documentary, filmmaker Teenaa Kaur Pasricha turned to a subject intensely close to her: her breast cancer diagnosis and her recovery.

In What If I Tell You, Pasricha explores not only her experience of cancer but also the silence around this particular form of the disease. Pasricha questions the overall reluctance in society to talk about a cancer variant that can transform women in fundamental ways.

“When I was undergoing treatment for breast cancer, I realised that no one wants to talk about it – even my parents said, forget it ever happened, like it was a bad dream,” Pasricha told Scroll. “It’s not an easy thing to forget, and perhaps it’s good to remember the lessons I learnt from the experience.”

Completed in February, the documentary has been doing the rounds of festivals, with an upcoming screening on May 15 at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai. “I wasn’t just making a film about myself but multiple films about so many other women too,” Pasricha said. “That’s one way to normalise the experience, rather than consider it as a stigma.”

What If I Tell You includes scenes of the Mumbai-based Pasricha’s visits to her oncologist and conversations with her parents, who live in Ajmer. A friend,...