All That Breathes: dir Shaunak Sen (2022)

From their makeshift bird hospital in their tiny basement, two brothers —  Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad – try to care for thousands of the black kites that struggle in New Delhi’s smog-choked skies. As environmental toxicity and civil unrest escalate, this documentary shows how the relationship between this Muslim family and the neglected bird provides a poetic commentary on the city’s collapsing ecology and rising social tensions. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus calls the film “a poetic tribute to tenacity” that makes “a broader point about finding triumph within tragedy”. Hindi with English subtitles.

This film screens in the sixth edition of the Manarat’s CinemaMAS film festival, curated this time by filmmaker and visual artist Scandar Copti – head of the Film and New Media program at NYU Abu Dhabi from 2014 to 2017. Currently, he is still teaching filmmaking at NYUAD while working on an upcoming feature film.

Individual films on weekdays are AED 30 per head, weekends are AED 50 per day, and there’s an all-inclusive ticket at AED 150.