“All That Breathes,” Shaunak Sen‘s Oscar-nominated documentary, was born when the director-producer was driving through New Delhi and saw a black dot falling down in the sky. It was black kite, a bird of prey that has been crippled by the city’s toxic air pollution. “I just happened to Google ‘Where do birds that fall off go?’ And I realized that there were many of these every day,” Sen tells Gold Derby at our Producers Guild of America Awards nominees panel (watch above).
Sen discovered Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, two brothers who, along with their assistant Salik, have dedicated their live to rehabilitating black kites and other birds in a cramped basement. “Just on a lark, I decided to visit Nadeem and Saud, who in their tiny, grubby, derelict basement have been treating black kites for the last 15 years. I realized they’ve been treated 25,000 black kites...
Sen discovered Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, two brothers who, along with their assistant Salik, have dedicated their live to rehabilitating black kites and other birds in a cramped basement. “Just on a lark, I decided to visit Nadeem and Saud, who in their tiny, grubby, derelict basement have been treating black kites for the last 15 years. I realized they’ve been treated 25,000 black kites...
- 2/3/2023
- by Joyce Eng
- Gold Derby
The sense of a city as a complex, ailing ecosystem is rendered with unusual vividness in “All That Breathes.” Shaunak Sen’s documentary has no formal interviews, onscreen text or omniscient narrator to provide relevant stats on Delhi, where air pollution is reportedly twelve times worse than in Beijing, which ranks second on the global list. Instead, the environmental impact is felt on the microcosmic level of two resident brothers dedicated to urban bird rescue. Meanwhile, they worry about a different kind of threatened extinction event: anti-Muslim policies that trigger waves of protest and violence.
This snapshot of self-harm both societal and planetary nonetheless manages a gentle, impressionistic lyricism. Like Sen’s prior feature “Cities of Sleep,” which revealed the subterranean networks providing places of rest for Delhi’s homeless, “All That Breathes” — which won the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance’s World Documentary competition — is a portrait more compassionate than bleak,...
This snapshot of self-harm both societal and planetary nonetheless manages a gentle, impressionistic lyricism. Like Sen’s prior feature “Cities of Sleep,” which revealed the subterranean networks providing places of rest for Delhi’s homeless, “All That Breathes” — which won the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance’s World Documentary competition — is a portrait more compassionate than bleak,...
- 1/28/2022
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
Often more than 10 times worse than in any other city on Earth, the air in Delhi is so toxic and inhospitable to life itself that birds regularly fall from the sky like feathered rain. The creatures have done their best to compensate for other symptoms of pollution — one species began singing to each other at a higher pitch in order to pierce through the industrial noise, while another started using discarded cigarette butts as parasite repellent — but there’s no substitute or silver lining for the absence of breathable oxygen.
If the people of Delhi are naturally confronted with the same crisis, they are even less equipped to live with it. Unlike the city’s teeming wildlife, the human population is rendered helpless by its ability (or its need) to assign blame. As a disembodied voice puts it towards the end of Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes,” about two...
If the people of Delhi are naturally confronted with the same crisis, they are even less equipped to live with it. Unlike the city’s teeming wildlife, the human population is rendered helpless by its ability (or its need) to assign blame. As a disembodied voice puts it towards the end of Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes,” about two...
- 1/28/2022
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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