Shaukat, a man of indeterminate age, clad in tatters and sandals that offer almost no protection from the cold, tiredly drags his feet along a lonely alley in London. His voice, devoid of emotion follows him, “There is nothing here.  The biggest problem here in England is house rent. I live on the streets.” He reaches ‘home’, a cul-de-sac of sorts at the end of the alley, and bending down pushes a pile of litter out of the way.  Then, in a gut-wrenching moment, he pulls a tent-shaped sack over himself, curls up and goes to sleep. 

Savyasaachi Jain’s documentary ‘Shores Far Away’ tells Shaukat’s story with brutal honesty laced with sensitivity. ‘Shores Far Away’ is about hundreds of simple hard working people who, like Shaukat, have landed themselves in trouble by adopting illegal means in their search for elusive fortunes. Risking their lives and eroding the assets they owned back home, they have eventually come a cropper.

The 54-minute film, made over 18 months, takes the viewer from Punjab through the UK – via Austria – in a bid to trace the travails of these irregular migrants. “Most police forces and anti-human smuggling enforcement officials agree on one thing – that these irregular migrants from Punjab are there to make an honest, decent living through hard work.  I chose to make this film because it dealt with human beings in trouble,” says Jain.

‘Shores Far Away’ talks about migration to Europe from Punjab, particularly from the districts of Jalandhar,
Ludhiana, Kapurthala and Nawanshahr, also called the Doaba (between two rivers) region. The youth of these regions, because of the basic education they possess, are unwilling to till their lands and look for ways to get rich fast. They often play into the hands of unscrupulous agents who extract huge amounts of money in return for false promise of a safe passage to Europe. 

But the film is not just about unscrupulous agents, falsified papers and irregular migrants landing in trouble.  It goes beyond the face of the problem and provides compelling insights to society and the way it subtly influences and tyrannises its subjects. 

The film is not for lazy viewing as it does not, at any point, hand-hold and lead the viewer.  What it does instead is to gently seduce the viewer into establishing intense relationships with each character – be it Rajinder Singh Rinku describing a donki or Hardeep Ghumman, a migrant, who has returned home scarred and traumatised after a failed attempt at migrating.

Donki is a method commonly  adopted by migrants to cross borders.  It means walking or being led for great distances like donkeys.  It is through Rinku that the viewer experiences the horrors of undertaking a donki across harsh, snow-laden countryside on foot and encountering others along the way that have just died, unable to cope with the cold and the harsh terrain. 

Haunting music, unforgettable moments the camera picks up almost instinctively, exhaustive research and a complete absence of melodrama in spite of the myriad suffering voices make the film a neat package.
The film has been screened to good response from viewers in four cities across UK.  Jain also has plans to reach the youth by screening his film in schools across Punjab. 

The filmmaker

Savyasaachi Jain has made over a hundred films, both long-format and short ones.  These include ‘In Essence’, a documentary about religion, mysticism and the universality of spirituality, ‘And the Women Weep’, a documentary on how women are affected by violence in Kashmir, and ‘Vijay Means Victory’, a film about the death of an alcoholic friend. 
Email him at: saachi@integritv.com