Against the Tide [2023]

 Watching Sarvnik Kaur’s poignant and poetic documentary Against the Tide, one’s immediately transfixed by the exacting chronicling of her deeply moving subject, given the long and arduous shooting conditions that it must’ve entailed. However, what enthralled me most was her fluid blending of narrative storytelling – and therefore fictive elements – into the nonfiction form, and the formal elasticity accorded by that. It draws particularly fascinating parallels with fellow Jamia Millia Islamia alumnus Shaunak Sen’s masterful docu All That Breathes. The nuanced and evolving portraiture – over the course of a year – of two friends belonging to the marginalized Koli community and tirelessly striving to sustain their piscine vocations, brings to mind the powerful delineation of avian passions of the two ghettoized Muslim brothers. The story of this indigenous fishing community – whose lives and livelihoods have been pushed to the edges on account of displacements due to Mumbai’s reconstructed cityscape, and rapid depletion of stock exacerbated by industrialized fishing, climate change and marine pollution – is evoked through two fiercely intimate friends, albeit separated by class and pursuing contrasting routes. Rakesh lives an impoverished existence with his wife and mother, having opted to continue pursuing traditional fishing in the shallow seas in his frayed old boat with a seasonal crew; Ganesh has moved up the socioeconomic ladder and lives in the city with his wife, but is stuck in the vicious loop of raising capital to go deeper into the sea using expensive crew and equipment, and drowning in debt as a consequence. The brilliantly shot work, with its underlying theme of tradition vis-à-vis modernization, is hauntingly bookended by two births and imbued with stirring echoes through recurrent use of a plaintive dirge.

Director: Sarvnik Kaur

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film

Language: Marathi/Hindi

Country: India