Vetal nagri

In India, in the region of Gujarat, a man roams the streets of Vadodara by night handing out a newspaper to the inhabitants. As they read it, their memories of jinn and local phantoms come back to life.

In the streets of Vadodara, in the State of Gujarat in India, a man drives around on a motorbike, stops and hands out a newspaper to the street craftsmen. Thumbing through this illustrated magazine – where the filmmaker and his Gujarati friend have gathered stories of local ghosts – triggers their desire to tell stories. Victims of possessions or simple witnesses, they launch into their stories without interrupting their work, like the trader who boasts about his “colours for divinities” and the “chocolate ice cream dye”. Often, a brother or cousin adds his bit, depicting with staggering topographical precision the place of the manifestations. An intermission shows two employees printing the newspaper we saw in the beginning; they check the amount of ink in the rotary press – as if the thickness of the shadows and djinn hung on its consistency. Vetal nagri intertwines the creation of a place’s atmospheres and the collection of oral tradition. In the depths of night, a young woman sometimes looms up holding out a translucent image of Goya’s Quita del Sordo, in shots as mysterious as the figures of King Vikrama and the vampire-storyteller Vetala, who inspired the film. Léandre Bernard-Brunel and his faceless narrator are unequalled when it comes to recreating a sociability on the threshold, and allowing words to circulate fluidly between the inside and outside, the quotidian and fantasy, waking and sleeping, protective spells and invocation. “No one dares enter if everything is left open…” (Charlotte Garson)