Mukti Bhawan

Shubhashish Bhutiani's first feature screened at the Venice Film Festival in 2016, where it won the UNESCO award for peace and human rights. The story is simple: after a dream, seventy-seven-year-old Daya becomes convinced his end is near and wants to go to Varanasi, to a house where people come to die. His son Rajiv has to leave his work and family to take him. The film does not make death heavy. The fifteen-day limit on how long anyone may stay, the ordinary relations the residents form with each other, the bills and the phone calls all pull it away from the mystical and toward comedy. The relationship between Lalit Behl and Adil Hussain carries the whole weight. Bhutiani had already won at Venice with his short film Kush, and developed this one through the festival's Biennale College programme. There is no touristic Varanasi in the images; narrow rooms, a courtyard, the river seen at a distance. Who it's for: viewers who like family drama that looks at death calmly and with humour. Who it's not for: viewers waiting for events; almost nothing happens across the film, and that is precisely the point.