A treat for the brooding realists

The International cinema line-up for this year’s International Film Festival of India (IFFI) is a treat for those who love hard-hitting documentaries and cinema with a tinge of politics. That apart, it is cinema of Latin America — which is often neglected compared to Asian and European cinema — that looks to be the area of focus this year. However, that should not stop us from expecting romanticism from Iran, quiet intimacy from Japan or visual splendour from China.

The opening film is The Man Who Knew Infinity , about the making of a genius, Srinivasa Ramanujam. Its synopsis suggests that it details Ramanujam’s training under Thomas Hardy at the Cambridge University and the path that created for him to carve his niche.

Among the films on the schedule for Day 1, the 21st, three films stand out —

The Black Hen (

Kalo Pothi ), a Nepali film which will have its first cut here,

Degrade , a comedy set in the open prison of Gaza Strip, and the opening Spanish film under ‘country focus’,

Isla Bonita .

Kalo Pothi is set in the poor, Maoist-dominated region of Northern Nepal during the peak of the ‘People’s War’ in 2001 and about true friendship that develops between two children from divergent castes who set out to raise a hen for a living.

Among the other films of our neighbourhood — Pakistani film

Moor , set in Balochistan and Bangladeshi movie Meghmallar , set during its Liberation War, invoke curiosity and will hopefully be able to hold the attention of the cinephiles.

Degrade , a film The Guardian has labelled “more important than good” raises the curiosity level several notches up by its very basic details as it is set in Gaza Strip, a tiny piece of land under Israeli occupation and repeatedly destroyed by periodic wars between the occupying forces — Israel on the one side and Hamas on the other. The movie plays out in a salon in the island where political rivalries and tensions become visible as inmates take a detour from their daily dose of violence.

Another film whose name will find resonance in the post-Paris attacks scenario is

May Allah Bless France , the story of French hip-hop musician Abd-al-Malik and his journey from penury to glory.

Another French film, Don’t Tell Me The Boy Was Mad ( Une Histoire De Fou ), is about Aram, a rebellious youngster from the second generation of Armenian refugees to France who decides to avenge Turkish brutality on Armenians by assassinating Turkish Ambassador to France. However, in the process, he ends up grievously injuring an innocent French youngster, Gilles. The movie seems to involve a second-generation victim of terror, who is forced to turn the moral compass toward himself and ask some tough questions like: what is the thin line that separates a freedom fighter from a terrorist? Is the sacrifice of innocent lives justified in fight for what one considers a ‘just cause’? And does a younger generation need to avenge the miseries suffered by the patriarchs in the family?

However, the most fascinating list when it comes to the international titles is of the documentaries. Two of the most promising ones — the Afghan documentary A Flickering Truth and the Indian-Pakistani joint effort, Among the Believers — have already won acclaim at festivals in Toronto and Tribeca, respectively.

Perhaps the desire for creative expression through motion picture is an evolutionary next step to the human desire to create a simple work of art. Nothing explains this better than the existence of 8,000 hours of film footage in Afghanistan and the marvellous efforts a set of cinephiles have undertaken to preserve them through the Taliban era. Pietra Brettkelly, who has in the past interviewed Libyan maverick dictator Muammar Qadhafi and shot in the conflict-torn South Sudan, has documented the efforts of a group of consummate Afghan cinephiles to preserve Afghan cinema and take it to the other side of the Taliban rule.

The second documentary that promises to be appealing is Among the Believers , a joint effort by an Indian, Hemal Trivedi, who lost a friend in the Mumbai terror attacks, and Mohammad Naqvi, a Pakistani liberal who escaped the clutches of radical Islam at a young age. Together they track a cleric, Abdul Aziz Ghazi, who runs an indoctrination camp for very young children in his madrassas. Hemal’s and Mohammad’s journey is through the lives of Ghazi and Talha and Zarina, two pre-teens who find themselves on the opposite sides of the Islamist divide. While Talha decides to leave her family and become a jihadi preacher, Zarina escapes the clutches of radical Islam and enrols in a regular school.

Another documentary to watch out for is Dreamcatcher , which won the World Cinema award at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. It is about the sex trade industry in Chicago and narrates the life story of Brenda Myers-Powell, who extricates herself from the trap and is able to establish Dreamcatcher Foundation, a charity that aims to help sex workers leave the trade.

From Caligari to Hitler documents an important period of creative expression in Germany, the one between the World Wars, the period which perhaps provided an artistic blueprint for the rise of Nazism. An experimental documentary, one that sounds to be a collage of selfies and autobiographical videos of a common man, is Sam Klemke’s Time Machine , about one average person’s obsession to document his own life and his transformation from a young optimist to a middle-aged cynic.

From the life story of an unsuccessful individual to one of someone who has managed to bring herself out of the prostitution trap, from an observation of the psyche of an Islamist radical to the documentation of an entire film culture in another Islamic country, the documentary section looks to provide a treat to the brooding realists within us.