'All that Breathes' Movie Review: An unconventional artistic documentary that celebrates animal activism

All that Breathes

Film : All that Breathes

Cast: Nadeem Shehzad, Mohammad Saud, Salik Rehman

Director: Shaunak Sen

Rating: 4/5

Runtime: 97 min

Shaunak Sen's awards-sweeping documentary on how man interacts with nature is a perfectly structured character study with amazing nature cinematography. Set in New Delhi around the time of the anti-CAA stir, the film brilliantly captures the backdrop of polluted air quality and politics while in the foreground we see a pair of siblings, Nadeem Shehzad and his younger brother Mohammad Saud, modest souls who have devoted nearly 20 years of their lives to caring for injured birds of prey referred to as black Kites - treating over 20,000 of them during that period. Nadeem and Saud live in a very rundown working-class, Muslim neighborhood and earn their living selling soap dispensers but their passion is rescuing injured Kites through their Wildlife Rescue organisation. Nadeem yearns to go abroad and make his efforts global while Saud is content to stay home and tend to those who need him most. Both are well aware that their contribution though crucial, has not made a dent on an ecosystem that is steadily going out of control. They have incorporated a new employee Salik, in order to augment their noble efforts but even they admit that there are more hurt birds now than even they can handle.

To bring home the point, we see Kites glide over the city's horizons against a smog/smoke-shrouded landscape. Sen glides his camera in such a way that we actually feel that these majestic birds are actually drowning in a sea of smoke. His imagery is at once powerful and evocative. In fact, shots of Kites soaring in the sky overtake those of humans or any of nature's other creatures. Sen's camera is equally evocative in capturing everyday nature - we see a variety of bugs in a pool of water while from the reflection we guage humans walking past and in another we are made aware of wild pigs crossing as horses stand by.

Sen opens his narrative with a shot of a garbage-littered ground where rats and other rodents make merry. Dog, cat, and feral creatures are sighted as the sequence gains clarity and light. Their cacophony gets louder as the scene merges into that of a car's headlights growing brighter. The merge between human and animal life in a city like New Delhi is striking.

‘All that breathes' touches on climate change, the adaptability of species, man's self-destructive way of life, and the weighty burden on nature and its resources while telling its central story of two brothers who love Kites. The film draws you in as it ruminates through these and other existential issues. The communication is highly effective even though it is mostly visual. There's hardly any dialogue, there's no voice-over assisting in decoding the visuals and the visual intent is poetic rather than provocative. This unconventional artistic documentary certainly rates as among the best ever!