The Breadwinner (2017)
Cartoons have the power to slowly burn their way down to our hearts. With its animation, this film might disarm you -especially the sepia coloured frames and bustling streets. Parvana’s life in a war-torn land riddled with orthodox obstacles transcends your worst possible imaginations and delivers something that will stay with you. Cartoon Saloon is known for its heartwarming stories, but this one might just do more to than that.
Based on a children’s novel by the same name (2001), it is a pathbreaking story and an equally pathbreaking adaptation for adults.
Four Daughters (2023)
This is a collaboration of reel and real characters reenacting the heartbreaking true story of a family fractured in the grasp of religious extremism. Every moment of the film is honest, even the harsh flaws of self remain exposed for us to understand and appreciate. When the credits rolled, an old woman beside me weeped openly at the closed echo chambers of radicalisation and their real life victims.
A rarely seen humanisation of a publicly known issue like this helps people make sense of what seems absurd from a distance but on a close viewing it stands as a testimony to the ills of a society we all participate in.
Harakiri (1962)
A glimpse into the dystopian hellscape of feudal Japan through a ritualistic suicide, this film is a visual vasectomy. The unimaginable sufferings of a deprives samurai family is contextualised in the obligatory horror of preserving honour. This is cinema that will gut you right up till your conscience with its endless revelations.
The action in the film translates to emotions at the swing of a sword. Something one must prepare themselves to witness in order to draw parallels with contemporary ways of living where the apple doesn’t fall far.
-Payal Srivastava
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