Shaunak Sen’s magnificent and courageous documentary All That Breathes has won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is many things at once—a deeply political, philosophical, environmental, poetic, compassionate, funny and moving documentary, that is a clear-eyed, gutsy comment on today’s right-wing India. It follows the two brothers, Nadeem Shehzad and Muhammad Saud, and their colleague Salik Rehman, who have devoted their lives to saving cheel—black kites, the regal birds—increasingly falling from the skies, thanks to Delhi’s pollution, and injury by manja (kite string). They have saved over 20,000 birds from a makeshift bird clinic in the basement garage of their modest home in Wazirabad, North Delhi. The kites, raptors, are their buddies: they eat meat from their hands; a naughty kite even expertly swoops and steals Salik’s spectacles off his face, without a whiff of a scratch.

Sen is drawn to fascinating stories of the marginalised. His debut documentary feature Cities of Sleep (2015), is also a superb docu on how Delhi’s homeless must pay the ‘sleep mafia’ to sleep on its pavements or road dividers, that was at the Dok Leipzig and other festivals. His All That Breathes is a prime example of how indie and docu filmmakers will find a voice that can be heard worldwide, even if the government shuts down all key film institutions (why bother with film, when you can manufacture consent with mere WhatsApp videos?). Sen’s producers include Teddy Leifer, Aman Mann, Florrie Priest and Sen himself, with funds from several nations.