Tears are enough

Went to see ‘I for India‘ this evening. It was moving enough for me to shed some tears. Although completed in 2005, it has only recently opened in the UK. It’s on every evening at the ICA in London. The screening we went to was sold out. Not bad for a rainy Tuesday night!

It was the tale of a family who emigrated from India in the sixties. The father of the family chose a novel way to keep in touch: he bought two super 8 cameras and two reel to reel audio recorders. One of each he sent back to his brother and parents in India. The others he kept so that the families could keep in touch by film and audio letter.

The film is made up of excerpts from these ‘letters’ being sent backwards and forwards over the following decades. This is combined with very well captured footage of the present-day family. Sandhya Suri, the director is the daughter of the family, born in Northern England.

I’m looking forward to the next fature doc Sandha makes. It may be that it might get wider cinema distribution. Some of the more interesting fiction feature directors have come from documentaries (Kevin Macdonald, Paul Greengrass), so I think we should pay attention to what Sandhya does next.