All That Breathes

Shaunak Sen's All That Breathes (2022) won the top documentary prizes at both Sundance and Cannes and then earned an Academy Award nomination, a level of recognition almost unheard of for an Indian non-fiction film. A UK co-production shot in Delhi, it announced Sen as a major new documentary voice.

The film follows the brothers Nadeem and Saud, who have turned a cramped basement into a clinic for injured black kites, the raptors that wheel above one of the world's most polluted cities. Sen shoots with great patience and an eye for beauty. His camera lingers on rats, insects and the teeming non-human life of the metropolis, and he sets the brothers' devotion against smog, flooding and the rising sectarian unrest of contemporary India. It is as much a tone poem as a report.

Some critics called it one of the finest documentaries of its decade, praising its painterly cinematography and the way it declines easy uplift. Its interest in coexistence, between humans and animals and within a fracturing society, carries it well beyond its particular place. Contemplative and gorgeous, and urgent without raising its voice, All That Breathes finds in two men and their birds a parable for living together on a damaged planet. Its success opened doors for Indian non-fiction on the world stage, and its close attention to the city's overlooked creatures has fed a wave of contemplative environmental documentary.