Writer and Director: Utsav Gonwar
Cast: Mahadev hadapad, Sandhya Arakere, Veeresh Gonwar, Jahangeer MS
Available in: Theatres
Duration: 98 minutes
Despite the simplicity of its narrative, Utsav Gonwar’s Photo comes by as an train of nice intricacy. It’s a heaving movie that has tons to exclaim however by no means does it permit its underlying anguish or sorrow to get in the best way of its tall journey. The silence, as they are saying, speaks volumes right here and that’s as a result of, for the writer-director, the movie is greater than only a visible doc. Instead, he sees it as a chance to deal with the viewers straight, to politely ask them to cease the fake act and to inform them that they too are partially complicit in the issue.
The drawback, after all, is centred on the mass exodus of migrant staff in the course of the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. The whole occasion, which now looks as if a distant reminiscence, has been the topic of loads of discourse and well-liked cinema similar to Anubhav Sinha’s 2023 movie Bheed, too, has shared its two cents on the matter. Bheed forged a searing and emotional gaze with its reconstruction of the exodus, peeling a number of layers of the social apathy that had come to the fore.
The Hindi movie’s black-and-white frames painted a vivid image and its loud, chaotic tone amplified its message. Photo, in distinction, opts for a very completely different method and stays nonetheless and silent all through. And in contrast to the various threads of tales that Bheed weaves collectively, Photo follows the solitary story of a father-son duo and its labyrinth journey again dwelling in the course of the lockdown. What each movies do is that they comprehensively and boldly underline the systemic mismanagement that we noticed at play on the time, however they each have starkly dissimilar voices to get the job completed.
