All That Breathes

The furry blobs scurrying across the dirt in a dimly lit area slowly emerge as rats. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of rats’ jostle and run over each other as they compete for space and survival.

The rats are part and parcel of life in one of the worlds mega-city’s New Delhi, they along with cows, monkeys and humans are all in a perma-cycle of competition for space. In the skies where supposedly, there is almost limitless freedom, the city’s bird of prey the Black Kites are also fighting to survive. This time it’s the smog filled air that’s causing them to fall out of the sky.

It’s with this backdrop along with the escalating sectarian violence that brothers Nadeem and Mohammed, and employee Salik have set up a makeshift hospital to care for the birds, fix injuries, give them space to recuperate to set them free. They felt they had to as the local bird hospital refuses to treat ‘non-vegetarian’ birds. The operation is in their basement and from there they have treated something in the region of 20,000 birds.

These numbers are staggering, and they keep mounting as the boxes of injured birds stack up in the brothers’ home, and treatment centre. It’s a daily task as they stoically set about treatment; it is second nature to them.

There’s a stream of consciousness about the film as the brothers narrate using quite beautiful language; their words conjuring up vivid images as well as offering philosophical perspectives as the city’s issues intertwine around them.

This is interspersed with the day-to-day hazards of crossing dangerous water courses to save a bird, a power cut mid-operation and tips to residents on how to deal with nesting birds. Then there’s family life. A Muslim family they are acutely aware of the rising violence on the streets of New Delhi.

Beautifully directed by Shaunak Sen, (complemented by an sensitive score by Roger Goula) he observes the gentle assertiveness of the brothers’ work, the eroding cultural and environmental situation providing a powerful narrative of the city’s toxic cross-pollination of religion, environment and industry.