It wasn’t planned that way, but there’s a Saumyananda Sahi double bill in the programme of We Are One , the ongoing YouTube film festival t...
It wasn’t planned that way, but there’s a Saumyananda Sahi double bill in the programme of We Are One, the ongoing YouTube film festival that will run till June 7.
The cinematographer has lensed both of the independent Indian features that will be streamed for free during We Are One. The first is Eeb Allay Ooo!, Prateek Vats’s biting satire on unemployment and the contractual labour economy. The other is Nasir, Arun Karthick’s sensitive exploration of the impact of communal violence on a sari store salesman.
The flourishing Indian arthouse cinema scene has produced a good crop of estimable features in recent years. Sahi has given several of them their distinctive visual texture. Eeb Allay Ooo! won the top award in the Indian competition category at the Mumbai Film Festival in 2019. Also at the festival was Kislay’s Aise Hee and Anamika Haksar’s Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Le Jaa Riya Hoon.
The thread that connects these films, apart from their fiercely independent nature and strong directorial voice, is Sahi. No one film can be confused for another. Eeb Allay Ooo! has a documentary feel to its staged scenes. Nasir uses intimate portraiture to explore the contours of its lead character’s experiences.
In Aise Hee, Sahi’s frames reveal the subtle changes that take place in the life of an elderly widow who emerges out of her...
