France / India 2021, 97 min, Bengali and Hindi, Hebrew & English subtitles
A possibly fictional box at the Film and Television Institute of India reveals a journal, film excerpts, and newspaper clippings. A young woman in love writes to a man who had broken up with her, dropped out of film school, and left the city because of their forbidden inter-caste relationship. At the student protests, he had stood beside her, but when it came to his personal life—he gave up. Director Payal Kapadia uses this small-scale personal story to illuminate the social and political turmoil faced by young people in India. She takes the words of forlorn L, clips from film student assignments, footage she had gathered, and staged scenes, weaving them into a dreamlike, often surreal story about the clashes between tradition and progress, freedom and oppression, passion and policing. The film won the L’Œil d’Or for Best Documentary at Cannes.
Previous Festivals: TIFF, Festival de Cannes, IDFA, NYFF
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