Opinion ‘All That Breathes’: An unusual record of the lives of people living through divisive politics
As violence escalates, some people nonchalantly go about doing the big work in small ways. They are thinkers and doers, not victims
Aakshi Magazine writes: The biggest gift of a film like All that Breathes, despite its loss at this year’s Oscars is that it compels you to notice life around you. 
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Shaunak Sen’s documentary All That Breathes surprises you by leaving you with a feeling of calmness. This is despite the fact that everything in its world is getting worse every day. Pollution in Delhi is deadly — birds are literally falling from the skies. A protagonist feels trapped; he wants more from his life. And a right-wing government is unleashing violence, both physical and psychological, as is evident by the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the violence in Delhi which happens during the film’s timeline.
And yet, the film is meditative, focused on the philosophical relationship that its three protagonists share with the kites they rescue. Salik, Nadeem and Saud are doers. They are also thinkers. From a basement in Delhi’s Wazirabad, they have been running a soap-dispenser business — and also saving kites for twenty years. They are not self-righteous, they don’t behave or talk like they are doing important work. Even though the film spends so much time around these three and their family, it feels mostly non-invasive. It is almost as if it has internalised the worldview of its protagonists and then embodied it in its form and style.
What is this worldview? At one point, Nadeem and Saud tell us that their late mother had taught them there is no difference between the human and the non-human. Everything that breathes, everything that exists, is worth caring for. You don’t care for something because it shares your nation or religion. You care for everything that shares the air you breathe. It seems like the brothers discovered that the antidote to the hateful times we live in is not being closed-in, not being safer in our cocoons, but being expansive. By shifting our gaze towards the wider world we live in. And discovering that there is still capacity for awe and tenderness in us.
The work of care rescues them even as they rescue the kites — “humne cheelon ko jitna bachaya hai, usse kai zyada cheelon ne humko bachaya hai” (“the kites have saved us much more than we have saved them”). Theirs is an act of hope. It is also an act of joy, even as life is hard. As one of them narrates in a haunting voiceover, he used to think he would collapse in their basement and die of a heart attack, while hoards of kites would emerge from his chest. The city appears like a wound to them, but they choose to work towards healing it. Following protagonists who make that choice makes the film an unusual document of the lives of people living through reactionary and exclusionary politics.
The biggest gift of a film like All that Breathes, despite its loss at this year’s Oscars (it was nominated in the Best Documentary category but the award went to Daniel Roher’s Navalny), is that it compels you to notice life around you. There is a wider world that lives through the consequences of human actions. It is not just us. Aware of that larger world, some people nonchalantly go about doing the big work in small ways, even as all kinds of violence escalates around them. They preserve their relationship with the world and therefore preserve the world itself. They are thinkers and they are doers and they are never, ever victims.
The writer teaches film studies at Ashoka University and has co-edited ReFocus: The Films of Zoya Akhtar. The views expressed above are those of the writer alone and do not reflect those of Ashoka University
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