The most important Indian title to be screened at the ongoing Toronto International Film Festival isn’t a feature from Bollywood, but a searing independent documentary by one of the most celebrated practitioners of the form.Anand Patwardhan’s Reason (the Hindi title is Vivek) was premiered at Toronto on Saturday. Divided into eight chapters and clocking in at four hours and 20 minutes, Reason is easily one of the most important documentaries to emerge in the Age of Modi. The film dives fearlessly into the debates that hit the headlines with troubling regularity: the murders of rationalists and attacks on activists critical of government policy; the emergence of shadowy Hindutva organisations such as Sanathan Sanstha and Abhinav Bharat; hyper-nationalism; the attacks on Muslims and Dalits in the guise of cow protection; the attempts to rewrite history; the mainstreaming of radical Hindu beliefs and the attempts within the government and outside it to transform India into a Hindu state; the attacks on protesting students in universities.Reason presents “empirical evidence of what is happening to India today”, says the official synopsis. “The overall argument of the film is made more gradually as we understand the ideological forces that have been at play for centuries.” [. . .]
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September 09, 2018
India: Anand Patwardhan’s documentary ‘Reason’ holds a troubling mirror to the headlines
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