Shape of Momo
Chhora Jastai
In this double Busan award winner, a woman’s urban feminist sensibilities place her at odds with her family’s traditional community.
Having left her job in Delhi, 32-year-old Bishnu returns to the village in Sikkim where she grew up. She stays in the family home, joining three generations of women: her grandmother, who misses her Dubai-based son; her mother, who juggles domestic and communal pressures; and her pregnant older sister, who is avoiding her husband and in-laws. Bishnu knows she has to help them, but her progressive views clash with those of the townsfolk. Meanwhile, her fondness for local architect Gyan only complicates matters.
Winning the Busan International Film Festival’s Songwon Vision and Taipei Film Commission awards, Tribeny Rai’s rousing feature debut tackles the conflict between tradition and modernity by way of one woman’s journey towards forging her own path. Set against breathtaking views of remote north-eastern India, the film recalls the works of Jia Zhang-ke in its dramatisation of how ‘progress’ – seen here through the prevalence of iPads, K-pop and karaoke – can reshape a culture. In her prodigious breakout role, optometrist-turned-actor Gaumaya Gurung injects Bishnu with complexity, playing her as both a maverick with a brattish disregard for custom and a firebrand unshackling herself from patriarchal strictures.
“A thoughtful family drama … Rai has delivered a nuanced critique of how a woman’s worldview can be bent along the fault lines of class and gender.” – The Film Verdict
Tickets
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