All That Breathes with Shaunak Sen

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[May 17, 2022] In one of the world's most populated cities, cows, rats, monkeys, frogs, and hogs jostle cheek-by-jowl with people. Here, two brothers fall in love with a bird - the black kite. From their makeshift bird hospital in their tiny basement, the "kite brothers" care for thousands of these mesmeric creatures that drop daily from New Delhi's smog-choked skies. 

So reads the synopsis for the film ALL THAT BREATHES by Shaunak Sen, which could sound straight out of an allegory - but this story is far from metaphor. Instead, it brings us close to the ecological crisis our planet and all its inhabitants face, and the political toxicity and violence inflicted on one another. 

It's a devastatingly honest, straightforward, lucid picture of where we are in humanity. And though this film is set in a specific moment in time and place (filming overlapped during escalating social unrest that came with the passing of a new citizenship law in India that excludes Muslims), it is far from elsewhere. The circumstances the film brings into focus, and the emotional reverberations belong to everyone - to all of us. This is precisely what makes ALL THAT BREATHES such a necessary film to experience.

We first encountered this film during its virtual premiere at Sundance and were immediately stunned. It's a beautiful film; it's very sensitive, gentle, and layered, but it also somehow left us feeling hopeful. And we grew curious about this - how could one construct a film of this nature that holds so much, where not only is our ecology collapsing, but where toxic discrimination, dehumanization, and oppressive political structures also threaten us - and yet, still convey a sense of hope?

In this episode, we explore this question with Shaunak as well as the ecological philosophy that underpins ALL THAT BREATHES.