Documentary on CM Arvind Kejriwal goes to Toronto film fest

An Insignificant Man, chronicling the birth of the Aam Aadmi Party and the rise of its leader Arvind Kejriwal, is among three documentaries from India to be screened at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival.

The Cinema Travellers, a documentary on the travelling cinemas in India by Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya, and Richie Mehta’s India in a Day are the other two films to be screened at the annual extravaganza starting from September 8 till September 18. Directed by Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla and produced by Ship of Theseus director Anand Gandhi, An Insignificant Man was filmed over the course of two years.

The director duo, who claim to have close access to the AAP and its leaders, said their film is an attempt to study various forces shaping democracy.

“Today the Aam Aadmi Party is at the centre of much debate. We are neither looking to make heroes out of them for being protesters nor wanting to vilify them for being politicians. Our film tells a story that resonates with universal concerns about democracy. Our attempt has been to construct a nuanced portrait of the various forces shaping democracy, the biggest of which is the voter,” the director duo said in a statement.

Previously titled Proposition for a Revolution, the crowd-funded film has won several international awards including the Sundance Fund, the IDFABertha grant and the Busan Fund.

The second documentary, The Cinema Travellers, will go to the Toronto Film Festival after a much-lauded screening at the Cannes Film Festival where it won special jury prize— L’Oeil d’or: Le Prix du documentaire. Madheshiya and Abraham document the nearly seven-decade tradition of travelling cinemas as they are on the brink of fading away. “Travelling cinemas are part of this collective communal experience for seven decades, but they don’t get any mention in our cinematic history. That was the trigger point to start the project,” the director duo told PTI in an interview.

Mehta’s documentary India in a Day is a unique experiment in filmmaking as it invited people from across the country to capture the essence of an evolving India in a single day. Directors Ridley Scott and Anurag Kashyap are executive producers of the documentary.