Filmmaker Ivan Ayr spent 13 years in the United States before returning to India in 2019. Much was different – and not only in material ter...
Filmmaker Ivan Ayr spent 13 years in the United States before returning to India in 2019. Much was different – and not only in material terms. Ayr observed “changes in attitudes and emotions”, a “lowering of empathy”. Many works of art being rolled out were more about “making statements” about the creators than about “trying to reach the other person”, he told Scroll.in.
In his first feature Soni (2018), Ayr explored an effort at emotional bridge-building through the intertwined stories of a Delhi police officer and her superior. Ayr’s compelling new film Meel Patthar (Milestone) examines the attempts of an aging truck driver to calibrate the distance he must keep from events and people around him. Ghalib is in his fifties and has been recently bereaved. He finds that a sense of loss is looming in other ways too.
The film’s larger backdrop is a distressed economy that encourages redundancy by privileging younger, lower-paid workers over seasoned employees. The trust that Ghalib (Suvinder Vicky) has built up over decades and the knowledge he brings to his work appear increasingly irrelevant – which is driven home when he is asked by his bosses to train a young recruit, Pash (Lakshvir Saran).
It’s hardly a coincidence that the truckers are named after...
