London’s Indian Film Festival returned to the UK this month for its first in-person event since the pandemic with one of its largest editions to date. The festival included acclaimed documentaries, shorts, features as well as screenings of some of the country’s recent classics.  This year’s festival also included a live interview with the legendary Aparna Sen.

In spite of my best efforts to see as much as possible, Covid did intervene and I sadly had to miss many of the must-see events at this year’s wonderful festival. However, I did manage to see a few and the following are the ones which stood out for me:

Amar Wala’s adorable documentary tells the story of Sikh immigrant Nav Bhatia who along with his family were forced to flee India in the wake of Indira Ghandi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguard. This assassination triggered an orgy of violence against the Sikh community, culminating in a death toll of between 8,000 – 17,000 Sikhs.  Arriving in Canada with an engineering degree in hand, Nav assumed employment would be easy to find.  Unfortunately, he was mistaken and instead he encountered vicious racism in his new home, mainly due to the fact that Nav refused to shave off his beard and remove his Sikh turban.

Since it was impossible for Nav to work in his chosen profession he turned to selling cars.  This was something that he had never done before, but he proved to be remarkably good at it, rising because of his expertise and enthusiasm to the position of co-owner of the company.   However, the moment he felt his life truly began was the night a colleague took him to see a basketball game. Nav started his extraordinary journey of becoming a super fan of Toronto’s then fledgling new basketball franchise team, the Toronto Raptors.

It is almost impossible to overestimate the impact of Nav’s devotion had in a country where immigrant communities often feel it is best to remain invisible. First, Nav’s dedication to a sport, which is far more multi-racial than Canada’s hitherto chosen sporting activity, ice hockey, allowed other immigrant families to also become fans. Also his ardent loyalty to a team who were new and at this point given little hope of surviving gave them much needed encouragement at a crucial moment.

Nav’s devotion did not stop there. He even booked the entire Raptors’ stadium, at his own expense, to celebrate the Sikh holiday of Vaisakhi and brought in children from diverse racial and faith backgrounds to celebrate.  He stated that if they can sit next to someone who is wearing a turban now just might prevent what happened to him in the past happening to a future generation of Sikhs.  Nav’s devotion to the team also paid dividends for the club itself, since his belief in the players seem to trigger a self-belief inside each and every one of them, which in turn helped them to make the journey from no hopers to NBA champions.

However, the film points out that Nav’s passion for the team is about far more than simply basketball, it’s about a passionate desire to bring racially diverse communities together and in the process to create a healthier, happier world.

Directed by Rebana Liz John, Ladies Only is a glorious black and white documentary that charts a train journey made by Rebana and her all-female crew in the ladies only compartment of one of India’s many trains.  Speaking to women who use the train daily, we get a wonderful kaleidoscopic view of contemporary Indian life through the perspective of the many women who live there.  Rebana speaks to a wide spectrum of women — those obviously from poorer backgrounds, as well as female professionals.  What she finds is a generation (and this is particularly true of many of the younger women she speaks to) who are not only ready for change, but are in the process of making it happen.

The director uses a fascinating device of asking her interviewees to read a poem entitled Azadi ((literary “freedom”) by the famous Indian feminist, the late Kamla Bhasin. Charting the various women’s reactions once they register its meaning is a joy to behold and, in some cases, very funny.  One encounter is with a young female police officer who says she struggles with her own anger and while reading the poem registers its sentiments as her own, to the horror the older woman sitting next to her, it has to be said, who feels the obvious clarion call for female emancipation is a dangerous one. These sentiments are shared by another woman interviewed who was married to an alcoholic.  When she is asked why she stays with a man who constantly drinks, she looks aghast at the question and says she has her children’s marriages to arrange, and chances are that if she married again, he too would be a drunkard. These views though, are not shared by, the majority of the women interviewed, who appear to be very much part of a generation who expect to live life on their own terms.

When Rebana asks a photographer if there is anything that she cannot do as well as a man, the woman momentarily looks mystified by the question but then responds with an emphatic “no”.  Ladies Only is the perfect antidote to the countless British documentaries about India shown in the UK — films that may appear to be poorly researched and often reinforce stereotypes about the country with its unrelenting focus on the poor.  Rebana’s documentary is fresh, vital and if anything, the interviews — particularly with the younger women — make you feel very hopeful about the future.

Other honourable mentions would be the lovely Aditya Vikram Sengupta Once Upon a Time in Calcutta which looks at the journey of a failed actress to find her true self.

A rare screening for Mira Nair’s 90’s hit Mississippi Masala starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhary, which tells the story of a biracial love affair set America’s deeply conservation rural south.

And finally the lovely queer short Queer Parivaar about a young trans woman who receives a very unexpected visitor on the eve of her wedding.

The Indian Film Festival is a welcome reminder that there is so much more to Indian cinema than Bollywood.