Oscar Contender ‘All That Breathes’: When Birds Fall From The Skies Of Delhi, Two Brothers Come To Their Aid
deadline.comOne of the top contenders for Best Documentary at the Oscars this year ranges from the skies above Delhi, India to a basement below the city’s north end.
In All That Breathes, brothers Nadeem and Saud operate a subterranean workshop-cum-makeshift animal hospital where they aid injured and ailing black kites, a bird of prey increasingly vulnerable to Delhi’s intense air pollution. “I was really gripped by this figure of the black dot in the sky, which is the black kite,” recalls filmmaker Shaunak Sen, “the lazy gliding dots that you see — one of the them starts falling down.
And I remember seeing this vaguely while driving my car one day and I was truly gripped with this figure. So, I started researching what happens to birds when they fall down.
And that’s when I came upon the work of the brothers. The minute that you walked into that tiny, damp, air-lit basement, and you see the metal cutting machines on one side and these incredible regal birds on the other, it’s cinematically dense and riveting.” All That Breathes, from Sideshow and Submarine Deluxe in association with HBO Documentary Films, opened in theaters in Los Angeles on Friday, a week after debuting in New York.
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