A luminous tale of souls in search of light. Saibal Chatterjee’s review explores Shashank Walia’s evocative directorial debut, a Punjabi film confronting caste, gender, sexuality, faith, dispossession and the enduring struggle for freedom.

Cinematographer Shashank Walia’s directorial debut, Birds in the Dark (original title: Hanere De Panchi), is a film that is transportive and entrancing, although the issues it deals with are weighty and of urgent import. It premiered in the Vision section of the 31st Busan International Film Festival, where it won the Songwon Vision Audience Award.

Buttressed by intense, immersive images awash with an interplay of light and shade, Walia’s filmmaking is marked by exceptional finesse. The frames are vivid. The characters are rooted in reality and yet feel almost otherworldly.

The Punjabi film, shot in resplendent black and white and written by the director, addresses a raft of themes – gender, sexuality, caste, faith, farmer unrest and resistance of the dispossessed.

Birds in the Dark tells a contemplative story of people counting their losses and striving for recompense as one season leads to another, carrying with them faint intimations of new beginnings.

Birds in the Dark is a film with a soft heart and a feisty spirit that follows people fighting to break free from societal shackles, emotional dead-ends and a cycle of exploitation inherent in existing power structures.

A Journey Towards Freedom

The film opens with a police informant, Jagtar (Harwinder Aujla), making his way through a forest with a handcuffed Kashmiri, Amir (Shahnawaz Bhat), who insists he is innocent.

The two men are on their way to a city. Once there, Jagtar sets the captive free and returns to the town that he once fled in search of freedom. Here, he reunites with schoolmate Dilraj Kaur (Mauli Singh) and former lover Raman (Navdeep Bajwa), a landowner conscious of the power he wields over the terrain and its inhabitants.

As Jagtar reconnects with his past, Dalit farm workers begin to organise themselves to demand their share of land. Soon after, Amir reaches the town and hooks up with Jagtar.

Raman tries to revive the bond he once had with Jagtar. His efforts are tested when Amir not only drifts close to Jagtar but also develops empathy with Dilraj, one of the brains behind the nascent farm rebellion. “You are a very brave woman,” Amir says to the steely Dilraj, a woman dreaming of collective farming as a means of living with dignity and pride.

These people, as well as Rinku Kaur (Sapna Das), Dilraj’s pregnant friend with her own story of humiliation and subsequent process of healing, grapple with unfulfilled personal desires and a history of oppression. Freedom is an illusion, Jagtar says to Amir. But the pursuit of freedom remains at the core of his existence.

Caste, Class and the Struggle for Dignity

Dilraj has never been out of Punjab. Her marriage has not lasted, which is why she is back in her parental home, from where her brother Jashan (Jashan Sran) runs a small catering business.

Portraits of Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh, Savitribai and Jyotiba Phule on a wall in Dilraj’s home tell the audience who the lady is and what she wants.

Jagtar has lost his land to a bank that gave him a loan that he could not repay. “I feel completely empty,” he laments to Raman even as the latter promises to recover his land and take care of everything else.

Raman clearly measures everything by material success. At a wedding, he asks Amir about the development that Kashmir has seen in the form of tunnels, trains, malls and multiplexes. Amir has not been to Kashmir for a long time, but he counters Raman with understandable scepticism.

Development that does not have the joy of the people at its heart is no development; it is mere spectacle, Amir asserts. It isn’t just notions of well-being that collide in Birds in the Dark. Class and caste, both important social markers, impinge on interpersonal engagements.

Dilraj’s brother finds out the hard way that he is in the midst of a battle of unequals when he seeks social parity with Raman at a wedding where the latter is a wealthy guest and Jashan is only a paid caterer subservient to those who are higher in the hierarchy.

While the film takes its time to arrive at this flashpoint, it abounds along the way with skirmishes, big and small, that indicate that things are never going to be fair here if one does not put up a fight.

A Luminous Portrait of Ordinary Lives

Birds in the Dark, replete with delicate touches that add nuance and depth to the ordinary struggles of ordinary folk, grows on you steadily with its ability to make you care for the characters. Walia uses his actors in a way that obviates the need for overt performance. The cast members are clearly aware that they just have to be the characters that they are. The rest takes care of itself.

Each one of the principal actors – especially Harwinder Aujla, Mauli Singh, Sapna Das, Shahnawaz Bhat and Navdeep Bajwa – simply disappears into the skins of the people they are on the screen.

Birds in the Dark is a wonderfully luminous film. It has a hard edge tempered with lyricism and poetic flashes.