a stunning new film, just nominated for an Oscar, called All That Breathes. It follows two brothers in New Delhi, India, who are self-taught bird doctors trying to save a type of bird called the black kite, which is suffering from the city’s dirty air. They’re falling from the sky. This is what Filmmaker magazine wrote about All That Breathes:
“’You don’t care for things because they share the same country, religion or politics. Life itself is kinship. We’re all a community of air.’ Those are the poetic words heard in the closing voiceover of Shaunak Sen’s mesmerizing All That Breathes. … [T]he film’s an ambitiously intricate study of the intersection of environmental collapse, religious tension, and the love of two Muslim brothers for a feathered scavenger unnervingly falling from a smoggy Delhi sky.”
The film actually started, more than anything else, with a clear sense of what we did not want to make. To begin with, we knew — I mostly wanted to steer clear of three things. Firstly, I did not want to make a nature doc or a wildlife doc. I did not want to make a kind of frontally, conventionally sociopolitical documentary. And mostly, I did not want to make a — you know, a sweet film about nice people doing good things. But that version is possible of this film. And instead, we wanted to make something which is cinematic about the air of Delhi, about birds, about this one remarkable and singular family in Delhi that takes care of these black kites, and, you know, put together a poetic, lyrical, cinematic piece.