Shaunak Sen gives injured birds and the people tending them the same patient attention. We find his filmmaking absorbing and humane, though All That Breathes sometimes suggests connections that need more explanation than he supplies.
Fi1m perspective
In All That Breathes (2022), Sen gives injured black kites individual attention rather than treating them as interchangeable evidence of a city’s troubles. The rescue work shares space with family life and observations of Delhi, so caring for an animal becomes part of an ordinary day. Sen, who directed and produced the film, resists making saints of its carers. We were moved by the patient tending of the injured kites, because he lets the work matter without insisting on anyone’s goodness.
That interest in how a city lives was already there in his first feature-length documentary, Cities of Sleep (2016), about the informal economies surrounding sleep among Delhi’s homeless. His second feature, All That Breathes, returns to Delhi through its injured birds and polluted air. Sleep and air give him ways to look closely at the city without pretending that one documentary can explain everything happening there. He is most convincing when he stays close to the practical business of meeting those needs.
His camera collaborators include Benjamin Bernhard and Riju Das, and he favours slow pans and tilts over handheld observation. These measured movements give non-human life time on screen without demanding a fresh incident every few seconds. Charlotte Munch Bengtsen’s editing on All That Breathes allows the rescue work and family scenes to sit alongside views of the city without spelling out every link between them. Roger Goula Sarda’s music supports the quieter passages without making every injured bird an occasion for sorrow. The measured rhythm mostly holds, though an evening with Sen requires a willingness to sit and look.
Our reservation concerns what those images ask us to believe about the birds’ injuries. Pollution is present, but All That Breathes does not explain the environmental problems clearly enough to establish every connection it encourages us to make. A little more information would help distinguish what has harmed the animals from the wider difficulties of living in Delhi. We recommend setting aside an unhurried evening for All That Breathes.
Biography
Shaunak Sen is an Indian filmmaker and film scholar based in New Delhi. He graduated in mass communication from the A.J.K. Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia and holds a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Sen's first feature-length documentary, Cities of Sleep (2016), screened at international festivals including DOK Leipzig and the Taiwan International Documentary Festival, and won six awards. His second feature, All That Breathes (2022), which he also produced, follows two brothers running a bird hospital in Delhi. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and the Golden Eye at Cannes, and received BAFTA and Academy Award nominations for best documentary.
