SHUNTE KI PAO!

Is it possible to live “normally” in the absurd situation of constantly moving house? Floods and storms are part of everyday life for the families living along the coast of Bangladesh. But the beauty of Shunte ki pao! lies in the fact that the film chooses to portray only one of them. Not particularly poor at the outset, the schoolteacher Rakhi and her husband Soumen, parents of young Rahul, saw their home and possessions engulfed by a tidal wave in 2009. Two years later, they are still waiting for government aid. Crab fishing, free showers under the rain, fruit bought piece by piece – filmed with the resources of direct cinema and from an unusually low camera angle given the extremely low roofs of these makeshift houses, Kamar Ahmad Simon draws a nuanced portrait of a middle class adapting to near breaking point. Exile in India? “An illusion”, says the jobless husband. A seawall? Everyone is helping to rebuild it, but the impressive plans for this structure in wood, sand and stone are not convincingly robust. In a setting where the cycle of time too often forebodes other disasters, the filmmaker’s endurance becomes the most promising hope that some kind of continuity in time is possible. (Charlotte Garson)