Farmers' suicides can't be stopped by curing depression

ARCHING in the Dark, Kinshuk Surjan's moving and inspiring documentary on the widows of farmers who died by suicide in Maharashtra, won accolades at several film festivals across the world.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

While focused on one of the young widows, Sanjeevani, it's about a group of rural women discovering inner strength, and resilience as well as fun, laughter and camaraderie in their shared loss and grief and getting healed in the company of each other. While challenging their patriarchal universe, the women also aim at securing financial independence to ensure a brighter future for their children.

A film about empowerment through female solidarity, it is one of the four Indian titles eligible in the Best Documentary Feature category at the Oscars. The other three are Nishtha Jain's Farming the Revolution, Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan's Nocturnes and Anand Patwardhan's The World Is Family. A graphic designer turned filmmaker hailing from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, Kinshuk Surjan is the son of the late Lalit Surjan, editor-in-chief of a prominent news daily.

He spoke to CE about his long journey into researching and shooting the film, collaborating with voices like Sanjeevani and challenging the stereotypical portrayals often seen in contemporary films.

Excerpts:

Have you closely seen the reality that you have captured in the film?

My grandfather was a farmer. My mother's village, Berdi, is on the border of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. There is a special place in my heart for the fields and farming. But that aside, there was this farmer's march from Nashik to Mumbai in 2018 and after a long time there was a sense of hope and not just a passive resignation about what had been happening. So, the name of the film comes from there, because the farmers marched in the dark at night.