‘Village Rockstars 2’: Busan Review

Dir/scr: Rima Das. India/Singapore. 2024. 107mins

In her 2017 docu-drama Village Rockstars, Rima Das explored life in a small Indian village via the experiences of her 10-year-old protagonist Dhunu (performed by Das’s niece Bhanita Das) — then, a free-spirited tomboy with a dream of proudly owning her personal guitar and taking part in in a band. Seven years later, Das returns to comply with Dhunu as she navigates an more and more rocky path to maturity on this unfastened and languid movie.

Observational, genuine

Village Rockstars loved a profitable competition run and was launched theatrically in India earlier than being chosen because the nation’s official Oscars entry. Since then, Das has made Bulbul Can Sing and Tora’s Husband, each of which have performed at worldwide festivals, and Village Rockstars 2, which premieres in Busan earlier than heading to Mumbai, ought to get pleasure from the same journey. Whereas it might wrestle to make an influence exterior of the competition circuit, there’s undoubtedly an viewers for Das’s observational, genuine fashion of filmmaking. 

Dhunu is now 17 and, whereas hints of sometimes teenage pursuits make themselves felt — listening to like songs along with her associates, discussing native boys — she continues to be essentially the identical. She loves nothing higher than climbing timber and romping via the fields within the small Assam village of Kalardiya, on the banks of the river Brahmaputra in northeast India. Whereas her goals of taking part in in a band might not have materialised — the others, she says, have grown up and forgotten about it — she shouldn’t be resentful.

Certainly, not like many movies of this nature, author/director Das doesn’t imbue her protagonist with overwhelming yearnings for all times past her village. The main focus may be very a lot on the here-and-now and, working as cinematographer (and producer, editor and manufacturing designer), Das captures the pure great thing about the panorama wherein Dhunu feels so rooted, together with the straightforward comforts of the house she shares along with her widowed mom (Basanti Das) and brother (Manabendra Das). That members of Das’s personal prolonged household have been forged to play these roles offers their interactions a lived-in heat; one thing that turns into more and more necessary as occasions unfold.

Whereas Dhunu finds a lot to get pleasure from about life, there is no such thing as a escaping the hardships — significantly as she leaves infantile pursuits behind. Rock stardom having not materialised, she is pulled into the backbreaking toil of working the land; one thing made much more tough by frequent floods. With cash and meals scarce, Dhunu’s mom’s well being begins to fail. Opportunistic brokers pray on folks’s fears to purchase up land at knock-down costs. Dhunu and her associates watch as timber are felled and fields dug as much as make approach for brand spanking new buildings which don’t have any connection to the area people. The stress causes cracks to seem in her family unit.

As with the primary movie, Bhanita Das offers a low-key, naturalistic efficiency conveying Dhunu’s deep connection to this land and her household. This refined method extends to each ingredient of Village Rockstars 2, giving it the sensation of a documentary. And it’s, of types. Rima Das makes use of this fictionalised story as a approach of amplifying the struggles of the folks of Assam, an space which is feeling the total impacts of local weather change and the more and more cut-throat battle for land and assets.

However there’s defiance right here, too. Dhunu’s prospects might not lengthen a lot past the village however that shouldn’t imply they’re restricted. Handled with care and respect, this land that she loves can reward her in form. Whereas a tragic occasion makes Dhunu’s future even much less sure, there is no such thing as a suggestion of her giving up. Like everybody round her, she fights to maintain maintain of the one lifestyle she is aware of.