‘Farming the Revolution’ Review: A Poetic Documentary About India’s Largest Protest
variety.comSiddhant Adlakha Nishtha Jain‘s “Farming the Revolution” — winner of the best international feature documentary prize at Hot Docs — captures the vast emotional scope of revolutionary movements.
Chronicling the lengthy stand-off between Indian farmers and the Modi government, during which tens of thousands of Sikh and Punjabi farm workers occupied highways and state borders, the film is remarkable in its audio-visual inquiry into protest as a cultural movement, and in its excavation of the emotional highs and lows involved in making lasting change.
Over eight months between 2020 and 2021, millions of people would weave in and out of these caravans of trucks and makeshift houses surrounding New Delhi, in the hope of curbing new laws that would open Indian agriculture to predatory corporate interests while plunging farmers into poverty.
Jain captures the sweeping magnitude of the protests through overhead drone shots and careful compositions on the ground — she often shoots large crowds from just above eye level, in order to capture them extending endlessly — but her narrative focus remains more on individual stories.
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