Sagnik Mukherjee

Dispassionate Love

Recalling memories of a friend who committed suicide, three lovers slowly slide into an anguish labyrinth of desire, loss and longing. They entangle in a colliding maze of forsaken loves, failed expectations and imperfect anticipations. A disintegrating web arises in which love exists, but as dispassionate yearning. Here affection is an indifferent desire that burns the soul to death.

Those Who Do Not Drown

In an empty hospital in Kolkata, India, a man faces protocols of blood, a subtly discriminatory office, and a vacant operating theater. His mind is on a loop of the last months of his wife’s life, when a quiet argument developed. When is the end of pharma-medical care, whose life is it anyway?

Glossary of Non-Human Love

In a parallel universe in our own space-time continuum, humanity has been overrun by artificial intelligence. The machines are better, faster and more efficient at everything, outstripping their makers. However, one aspect of humanity escapes them: love. Their guidebook attempts to capture the phenomenon in 64 terms, including jealousy, regret and ardour. Posing in homey and romantic settings, they run through the entire spectrum with digital precision, yet without a hint of passion. Director Ashish Avikunthak outlines a worrying, yet confusing impression of a posthuman future in which technology has overtaken and annexed humanity. He presents the new masters of the universe as 2.0 versions of the Hindu pantheon. Yet while Hanuman, Shiva and Kali sometimes reveal all too human traits, this is definitely not the case when it comes to love. Loves dies out with humanity.

Devastated

In confrontational conversations with his wife and his lover, a middle-aged Indian policeman opens up about his work as a 'sacrificial assistant', a state-designated agent tasked with extra-judicial killings of Muslim men. Elsewhere in the city, Lord Krishna and the prince Arjuna enact a dialogue from the Bhagavad Gita. Paralysed into inaction during battle by human considerations, Arjuna seeks the counsel of Krishna, who instructs him on the moral duty of a warrior.

Pinjar

‘Pinjar’ is an evocative meditation on captivity—of bodies, of spirits, of choices—unfolding through the entangled lives of five individuals and a wild bird.

The Killing of Meghnad

Having invaded Lanka to rescue his abducted wife, Lord Ram must face the mighty Meghnad, Lanka’s invincible crown prince. What should have been a righteous battle between equals is manipulated by the gods, who conspire to favour Ram and deceive Meghnad.

Bengali Variation

A young female poet and journalist decides to look for her childhood love, a perpetual student who gets mixed up with oppressive gambling debts. The lovers unintentionally play a game of hide and seek through the crowded maze of Calcutta in an effort to re-connect.

Dostojee

Two 8-year-old boys navigate a growing religious divide in this beautifully observed portrait of childhood set after the destruction of India’s Babri Mosque.