The New Delhi-set documentary reflects on the damage of pollution, but also about the importance of conservationism.
by Alberto Sclaverano for Citiplat
Indian filmmaker Shaunak Sen became famous internationally for to his 2022 documentary All That Breathes, a co-production between his native country, the UK, and the USA. The movie tells the real story of two New Delhi brothers, Saud and Nadeem (in real life they are Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, conservationists who have a bird clinic in Delhi, still operating today). They grew up watching black kites (the most spread variety of birds of prey in the world) in the city’s sky. Sadly, during the last decades, due to the increasing pollution of Delhi’s air and India’s skies, kites started to get ill and fall from the sky, often with severe injuries. The two brothers’ mission became to rescue, heal, and rehabilitate these beautiful, yet vulnerable, animals. In their clinic around 20.000 birds were cured in the last 20 years, a number that is simply astonishing.
The film was mainly financed by HBO. First screened at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in January, then at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and also at the Rome Film Festival in October, it was released in the United States the same year. It was made available on digital platforms worldwide the following one. During 2022, it was screened in several prominent festivals all around the world, winning, among others, The Grierson Award for best documentary at the 2022 BFI London Film Festival. It also received a nomination for Best Documentary at the 2023 USA Academy Award.
Shaunak Sen’s movie works on two different levels. It is, of course, a eulogy for conservationism and people, like the two protagonists, who devote their lives to preserving endangered species and the ecosystem. But it is also a harsh denounce of the climate crisis and its disastrous consequences on wildlife.
The movie opens to a desolate landscape in one of Delhi’s poorest districts, and often during its runtime forces the spectator to watch the degradation of the environment and the level of poverty in certain areas of the city. While the scenes that show Saud and Nadeem taking care of wounded birds are moving and sweet, other images are almost harrowing to watch, sometimes reminiscent of scenes from Hubert Sauper’s tragic documentary Darwin's Nightmare.
The film reminds us that it is the global South that is most affected by pollution, and the developing nations continue to pay the heaviest price for climate change. India, as shown in the film, is a tragic example. The deterioration of the quality of air, and the always polluted and grey sky above the capital of the country are hurting the health of both people and animals.
While it never becomes a movie with an explicit thesis, All That Breathes seems to clearly advocate for a different path to growth: one in which the quality of life and the environment do not need to be sacrificed for fast economic development, and inequality does not become so extreme, as it is in today’s India society according to what Shaunak Sen shows us. Factories’ chimneys never stop releasing gas into the air, the sky becomes gloomier every day and the birds continue falling and dying. Is this the world we want to leave to future generations? This seems to be the question that, while indirectly, All That Breathes wants to ask to us.
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