In this mesmerizing experimental documentary, a father reads aloud a letter his far-off son has written to their fallen relative, a communist leader in Maharashtra and follower of anti-caste reformer B.R. Ambedkar. Over their long-distance screen conversation, the son, filmmaker Suneil Sanzgiri, presents a stirring poem about exile by the Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, performed during a protest at New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University. He also weaves in archival footage of actor Shabana Azmi’s public reading of a letter dissenting the murder of communist playwright Safdar Hashmi; and a poignant ghazal by Urdu poet Faiz rendered by Pakistani singer Iqbal Bano. 

Radicalizing the forms of new media and video art to release deep-seated emotion, Sanzgiri offers a heteroglossia of voices, text and images of resistance for the people of Kashmir, from the uprising of 1989 to present day anti-Citizenship Amendment Act demonstrations at Shaheen Bagh, Delhi. Frame-by-digital frame fastened onto 16mm celluloid, he navigates a topography of erasure while proposing a Tamil understanding of ‘tomorrow’ as “If I were to be alive”. Shifting between the political and the personal, Sanzgiri perseveres to unmask his own biography and identity, defying the impossibility of reconciliation among memory, homeland and diaspora.

DIRECTOR

Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist, and filmmaker working to understand how systems of oppression are informed and reinforced by trauma, history, and memory. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a Masters of Science in Art, Culture and Technology in 2017. His work has screened extensively at festivals nationally and internationally including premieres at International Film Festival Rotterdam and New York Film Festival.