A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING Documentaries

Winner of the Best Documentary Award at Cannes, Payal Kapadia’s hypnotic feature directorial debut examines rediscovered, once lost film reels and a diary written by a student (“L”) to her absent lover at the Film & Television Institute of India. As her words are read aloud in sedate tones, her own intimate and singular experience of heartbreak reflects that of a generation of students in India experiencing intense feelings of anger, sadness and powerlessness at the injustices of the Modi government. Layered sound and black and white cinematography contrasts vividly with vibrant saturated colors, and that which is remembered or dreamed or truth or fiction is indiscernible in Kapadia’s semi-fictionalized account of political upheaval in India and the student protest movement against rising nationalism, ethnic cleansing and abuses of the lower castes. –Malin Kan