Directed by Payal Kapadia • 2021 • France, India
Starring Bhumisuta Das
Through fictional love letters found in a cupboard at the Film and Television Institute of India, we meet L, a film student writing to her estranged lover while he is away. Gradually we’re immersed in the drastic changes taking place at the school and in the lives of young people across the country as they take to the streets to protest the widespread religious and caste-based discrimination intensifying under Narendra Modi. In her debut film, Payal Kapadia deftly merges reality with fiction, weaving together archival footage with student protest videos to create a vital tapestry of the personal and the political. With its dreamlike editing rhythms and revelatory use of sound, A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING is both an essential document of contemporary India and a nostalgic look at youth fighting the injustice of their time.
Up Next in Documentaries
-
Songs for Drella
Directed by Ed Lachman • 1990 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Lou Reed, John CaleNewly restored, this elegiac concert documentary captures the extraordinary 1990 reunion of estranged Velvet Underground bandmates Lou Reed and John Cale. The occasion for this landmark event was a live pe...
-
Black Panthers
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1970 • United States
Agnès Varda turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration against the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton. In addition to evincing Varda’s fascination with her adopted surroundings and her empathy, this perceptive sho...
-
Searching for Mr. Rugoff
Directed by Ira Deutchman • 2019 • United States
Starring Donald S. Rugoff, Elyce Bonnell, Peter BroderickThis illuminating, unexpected slice of forgotten film history tells the story of Donald Rugoff, who was the crazy genius behind Cinema 5, the groundbreaking midcentury theater chain and fil...
