Everything Is Cinema

A Malayalam-speaking filmmaker called Chris sets out for Kolkata to shoot a documentary in reaction to Louis Malle’s 1969 Calcutta. Despite being Indian, he’s as much a stranger to the city as Malle was. Shortly after starting to shoot the film, Covid-19 hits the world, forcing him into quarantine. Instead of facing Kolkata, Chris is now faced with the relationship with his wife who accompanied him, with both not expecting to see that much of each other. Instead of looking outwards, he’s now looking inwards.

For Don Palathara, Malle’s masterpiece offers a medium through which he can ask not only some fundamental questions about our relationship with reality, but also about the relationship between politics and cinema. If the Indian government back then considered Calcutta insulting, what will the current regime say to essentially the same images, but made by an Indian?