The dream run of ‘All That Breathes’

One of the things that German film director Werner Herzog wants every prospective filmmaker at his Rogue Film School to do is read a book called The Peregrine. It is a feverish account of an Englishman called J A Baker pursuing a pair of peregrine falcons, observing them closely, obsessing over them and eventually believing he was one of them. Herzog says that no one since Joseph Conrad could produce prose of that calibre.

Filmmaker Shaunak Sen mentions The Peregrine in one of the interviews about his Oscar-nominated film All That Breathes. Fascinatingly, Sen’s film exhibits the same lyrical quality as Baker’s book. All That Breathes approaches poetry in its narrative style and complexity.

Two brothers Saud, Nadeem and their cousin Salik have devoted their lives to rescuing birds -primarily black kites that fall out of Delhi's grey, polluted skies. Some of these creatures are brought to them in perforated boxes, and some they go to great lengths to rescue themselves. The film follows them through their passionate endeavours, while touching upon complex issues of politics, religion, ecology and history. It’s a story of survival on various levels - that of the “savage” birds of prey, and of the brothers, who are surrounded by human savagery of a kind. All That Breathes is a film that manages to connect with you emotionally, and refuses to leave you for days and weeks after you’ve seen it.

Also Read — India's 'All That Breathes' misses out on BAFTA award for best documentary

The film has been making waves internationally in the festival circuit and had a wildly successful theatrical run in the United States. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the Golden Eye award for the best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival, swept the IDA (International Documentary Association) Documentary Awards and led the Cinema Eye Honors awards with three wins: Outstanding Non-fiction Feature, Outstanding Cinematography, and The Unforgettables. The buzz was strong, and it all came to a head last month when All That Breathes got the Oscars nod. It was among five nominees for the Best Documentary Feature Film Category. It is the second Indian film ever to be nominated.

Traditionally, the Best Documentary Feature Film category has been regarded as one of the most competitive ones, though it gets the least media attention. When the category was
conceived in the early 1940s, for a whole decade only war-related propaganda films were honoured. The awardees were usually the US Navy, British Ministry of Information, and the
Australian News & Information Bureau. The decade closed with the first non-war film winning - a ditty called Daybreak in Udi (1949) about the White Man’s Burden to modernize Nigeria. In the seventy years that followed, no film from the Indian sub-continent was ever a nominee for Best Documentary Feature.

In 1978, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s An Encounter with Faces had been nominated but that was for the Documentary Short Film category. This year, The Elephant Whisperers, another Indian contender, has made it to that list. In 2021, Writing with Fire became the first Indian film to make it to the top five documentary features. Probably for the first time in history, the Documentary Feature category found immense media attention. You see, these were the awards that Chris Rock was about to announce when the Slapgate unfolded.

Documentaries have gotten more and more engaging over the years, and courtesy of the/streamers, they are getting higher global viewership than ever before. Last year’s winner was a Disney Plus favourite (Summer of Soul Or When the Revolution Could not be Televised) and the one before that (My Octopus Teacher) was a hit on Netflix. This year’s contender All That Breathes has already been picked up by HBO. The story of the Delhi brothers fighting against all odds to save kites falling off the sky is getting every bit of the love and acclaim it deserves. The Academy has an elaborate voting process for shortlisting documentaries.

From the 100- plus eligible films, more than 500 jury members drill down to the 15 semi-finalists. The eligible documentary features are added to a virtual screening room available to all the members of the documentary branch. Each branch member submits a preferential ballot of 15 choices, from which the 15 semi-finalists are collated. Members are then encouraged to watch films on the list they haven’t already, before they choose their top five. These five documentaries were announced on January 24, and then all academy voters cast their ballots for the final winner, to be revealed during the 95th Academy Awards ceremony on March 12.

All That Breathes has been pitted against some heavy hitters this year. Of the five films nominated for Best Documentary Feature, three are making it to almost every prediction list
online. Besides All That Breathes, the other two are All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and Navalny. Navalny, being dubbed a ‘front-runner’ by many, is a gripping tale of the eponymous
opposition leader from Russia who survived the alleged poisoning by Vladimir Putin and is languishing in jail. It is structured and shot like a thriller. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is
about photographer Nan Goldin’s fight against the influential Sackler family, who are behind a lethal prescription drug.

The competition is fierce, but Indians can take heart from the fact that Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes is a near-perfect film, which is making all the right noises. More power to them. Herzog and Baker would approve.