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Mint
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Social reform amidst a sea of poppies
Vivek Chaudhary's I, Poppy is a ruminative film on poppy cultivation and the insidious way the process in India is tied to exploitation more than growth. It throws light on government policies, which issues licences for opium poppy cultivation and buys back the produce at Centre-decided rates, and outlines the helplessness of farmers and their vulnerability to corruption. The filmmaker, however, inspects the social malaise through a personal dynamic. At the heart of I, Poppy lies Vardibai, a Rajasthan-based poppy farmer and her iron-willed, schoolteacher son, Mangilal. There is a world of difference between them. Vardibai is old and unlettered; the middle-aged Mangilal is the first educated member in the family. She spends her time tending to poppy flowers; her son either talks over the phone indoors or rousingly speaks to farmers outside. They are Dalits but differ in their responses to injustice. Vardibai is passive to the aggressive money-making tactics by corrupt officers where licences are revoked at will; Mangilal mobilises crowds to fight against manipulation of farmers. She discourages him from protesting but he carries on, as if, fed on the very crop they sow, he is intoxicated to the idea of social reform. I, Poppy, with its intimate title, offers a sobering portrait of a rebel and the cost of his rebellion. Shot over four years, it underscores the loneliness that comes with it and by insisting activism to be a full-time job, also questions its feasibility in a dissent-averse country like India. The film premiered and won the best international feature at Hot Docs, marking a consecutive win for an Indian protest documentary at the Canadian documentary festival. Last year, Nishtha Jain's Farming the Revolution secured the coveted honour. Prior to the announcement, Chaudhary spoke about his journey. Edited excerpts from an interview. How did you find Mangilal and Vardibai? I lived in western Rajasthan where opium addiction is a culture. Growing up, I have seen elders have this brown liquid while we drank milk. Opium can be a deadly drug but is also a benign pain relief medication. At some point, I got fascinated with poppy and in 2017, researched and realised how potent the crop is. Multiple factors—the Narcotics Bureau, the black market, people who require morphine for palliative care—try controlling it for vested interest. It started out as a bigger story and at some point, became too big which came with safety issues. We scaled it down by going back to the source where it is grown. In 2018, I shot with three families for a whole season (70-80 days for six months). But they ended up being scared to be on camera for a story like this. We were in a fix. Then at a protest, I met Mangilal. Initially we did not like him because he talked too much (laughs). We were also looking for someone older like a quintessential Rajasthani farmer. On a whim Mangilal asked us to come home and meet his mother. We agreed. His mother didn't consider our presence. From the moment she saw her son, she started scolding him for being late. She kept saying, 'you will be killed. Don't do this". I asked if we could shoot, and when we did, the presence of the camera almost had no effect on them. I realised it was a great story. The fact that they are from the Dalit community informs their resistance. But it appears that you had not set out to explore it. Absolutely. When I was looking for families to shoot with, I was taken only to villages where upper caste people lived. Lower caste people live tucked away and our attempts to talk to them were thwarted by village heads. Access was difficult. But when I met Mangilal and his mother, I was struck by the dynamic they shared. We tried not overplaying their caste. There is one reference at the 60-minute mark but there are many references to (B.R.)Ambedkar. His portraits adorn their house and Mangilal wears the Ambedkar blue. Mangilal was associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party in fringe capacity 10 years ago. Later, he read books about Ambedkar and realised that he walked a certain way into the world because of that man. Vardibai resists fighting bigger battles because she has grown up in a world where untouchability was rampant. She wants to protect whatever space she has. You shoot them differently, opting for static framing for Vardibai and more frenetic shots for Mangilal. Our visual treatment became clearer while writing the several applications to procure funding. Mustaqeem Khan, the cinematographer, and I decided on the filmmaking intuitively. Since Vardibai spends most of her time in the field, we put the camera on a tripod. Mangilal has this relentless pace. A million thoughts go inside his head so we had to be ready. The film interprets the social reality the poppy farmers are in through the difficult relationship between Mangilal and his mother. Yet, a sense of boundary comes through in the way you have shot them. For instance, we never see Mangilal in his room. His wife remains absent till she appears in one scene but her face is obscured. His sons appear much later. Was this due to limited access? During shooting, we stayed at their house. They cleared the storage room and put out two cots for us. There was a connection, especially between me and Mangilal. In a way, both of us are stuck because of who we are as people. If he was not an activist, he would go on with his life, and if I was not a documentary filmmaker, I would invest my time and energy somewhere else, and not keep going back to making films where there is nothing, financially speaking. Even with his mother, I could converse freely because I speak the language. We got a rhythm of their lives. Mangilal and his wife have a difficult relationship and although we shot with her, we both felt uncomfortable. Initially, when his sons and he argued or fought, Mustaqeem and I stayed in our room. It felt wrong to intrude. Little over a year later, we asked Mangilal if we could shoot and he instantly agreed. He could sense the film we were making. There was a push and pull in the filmmaking because a family dynamic had formed. 'I, Poppy' ends on a solemn note. Given that this is a film about a man standing up against a mammoth system that will only continue, when did you decide to stop filming? During the shooting, we got a sense that Mangilal's steps were becoming bigger. He was mobilising larger crowds and something was waiting to give. Either he will win, which is the story everyone wants to see, or he won't. Since this is India, one has to find that happy ending. This is why we give him a hero-like shot at the end. There could not have been a definite resolution but we wanted to see where things go. At the end, when the rain destroys their crops, it seemed like an appropriate point to stop. They won but they also lost. Ishita Sen Gupta is an independent film critic and culture writer. Her work is informed by gender and pop culture. Also read: How to make evacuation drills accessible for the disabled
CBC
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
What the anxious hero of my documentary can teach us all about happiness
Cutaways is a personal essay series where Canadian filmmakers tell the story of how their film was made. This Hot Docs 2025 edition by director Denis Côté focuses on his film Paul. I used to see someone who would occasionally and impulsively call a certain "Paul." She was tired, she'd say, and needed a lift home. I raised an eyebrow for sure. This car ride to get her home was repeated until I asked the obvious question: who could this man be? She explained that, as a "simp," Paul offered her this service; his sole purpose being not only to help out but also to serve, since women deserve, in his eyes, every attention and every possible comfort. I learned that simps like Paul devote a large part of their time to serving women while asking for very little, if not nothing, in return. And as a filmmaker, I saw a fascinating territory to explore. But what kind of opportunity would it be? The film project itself was dangerous. Could I avoid voyeurism, sensationalism and the exploitative gaze while exploring Paul's rituals of power and consent in surprising BDSM dynamics? Yet, somehow, the challenge and risk of failure were exciting to me. The idea of making a patient observational documentary — similar to what I had achieved with my six bodybuilders in 2016 in the film A Skin So Soft — was also appealing. Shy, secretive and discreet, but possibly fascinated by the idea of one day seeing a documentary about himself, Paul agreed to meet me. I quickly came to know a man who was anxious and fearful, constantly searching for safe spaces, yet also very intelligent and able to put his past and present life journey into words. Throughout our meetings and the filming process, and even after editing this film, some of his intentions, actions and sense of intimacy remained in the dark — or at least a grey area — for me. The film cannot claim to understand everything about Paul. But with a no-budget approach and a crew of two, I tried to get a grasp of his colourful journey over the course of a seven-month shoot. Also invited into the project was a very contemporary reality: the strong desire to exist via social media, an addictive and obsessive world — mouldable and controllable. Paul and several of his dommes are keenly aware of the image they maintain on Instagram. Maybe it's because I'm from another generation, but I was really surprised to see the extent to which the real world only seems to exist to them within the virtual one! Paul creates a kind of perfect prison for himself where he feels complete, free and safe. By the same token, reality bores him and usually stresses him out. In love with the world of Alice in Wonderland, obsessed with the idea of making every corner of his apartment magical, excited by his friendships with dommes, haunted by his number of followers on Instagram — Paul lives in a candid if somewhat manufactured world. It was important for me to offer him a benevolent film, sometimes strange but never pitying or hyperbolic. I wanted a nervous and loving camera, always fixed on the slightest reactions of a character with buried and locked emotions. It wasn't always easy. Paul isn't extraverted, he doesn't spend much time with men, and it was hard to suss out whether he was truly interested in the project. He often seemed to be asking why me? I had to convince him that it would make for a nice film exploration on themes like anxiety, loneliness and self-validation. I'm very proud of what we did. I think we managed to achieve a good level of authenticity. Yet I was scared to show Paul the film, and worried that he would demand edits or additions. He was a bundle of nerves before our private screening, but he gave me a heartfelt "thank you" afterward and said that it "really covered every aspect of his life." We were both very relieved. While making this film, the dommes all understood that we were doing this for Paul, to help him and validate him, not to focus on these women's lives and motivations. Some are involved in the BDSM lifestyle and community, but I didn't want to make a documentary about that already visible and meta-visible topic, with all the usual sensationalistic clichés. Instead, I wanted to make a delicate and very intimate film, without judgment — as fluid and enigmatic as Paul's uncertain quest.
CBC
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Films with Manitoba connections at Hot Docs range from surreal animation to history of 2SLGBTQ+ rights
Social Sharing With its launch in Toronto last week, the documentary film festival Hot Docs celebrated its 32nd year in earnest after coming perilously close to dissolution last year due to money woes and key staff resignations. If one can say it has rebounded in 2025, no small credit goes to Manitoba filmmakers and Manitoba subjects. Like the Toronto International Film Festival last September, Hot Docs has a rich abundance of Manitoba content (if not actual Manitoba productions) that, at minimum, affirms the province's plurality of talent. The festival began with a resounding bang with the April 24 evening opening premiere of Parade: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance at the Hot Docs Cinema, the first of 113 docs on the program. The press/industry screening and the first public screening were held back-to-back. The National Film Board production was directed by current Winnipegger Noam Gonick and produced by former Winnipegger Justine Pimlott. Despite being laid off from the NFB last year, Pimlott has been having an impressive run of films, including her project Any Other Way, a portrait of trans soul singer Jackie Shane that just this week won a Peabody Award in the documentary category and also won the $50,000 Rogers Documentary Prize from the Toronto Film Critics Association. A comprehensive history of the fight for 2SLGBTQ+ rights over the past 60 years, Parade combines a history of activism and queer themes, both of which are near and dear to the hearts of Pimlott and Gonick, both children of activists. The opening night screenings went over enthusiastically, especially since many of the activists interviewed in the film showed up for the screenings, filling the stage of the cinema with living witnesses to the events depicted. Gonick, for one, was happy to share the stage. "When it's just one person out there to represent all those voices, that's just not the way it should be," Gonick said in an interview after the screening. "So it was just perfect that we had, like, a photo call of 35 people. "Svend Robinson [Canada's first MP to come out as gay ] flew in all the way from Cypress just to be there that night." Pimlott, who premiered Any Other Way at Hot Docs last year, called the festival "this incredible platform to get word out." "At the public screening, we got a standing ovation, and most of the activists were there. So the Q&A was really taken up with these moments of these incredible people all being together in the same room, and God knows when they were last together," she said. "The audience got a chance to be in communion with these incredible elder activists," Pimlott said. "So that was really remarkable." Animated doc 9 years in the making Endless Cookie — perhaps the most eccentric documentary since Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg — is an animated feature centred on the lives of half-brothers and storytelling collaborators Seth and Peter Scriver. Seth, who is white, lives in Toronto, while Peter, who is white and Cree, lives in Shamattawa First Nation in northern Manitoba. Their relationship and their larger family lives are expressed in chaotic animation. This is the closest any filmmaker has come to capturing the psychedelia of Heavy Traffic -era Ralph Bakshi, courtesy of animator Seth, who co-directed the 2013 animated road movie Asphalt Watches. More than nine years in the making, the film went through changes, including the fact that little children seen in the beginning of the film transmogrified into adults by the end, including the title character Cookie (who, of course, is drawn as a literal cookie). "Cookie is not a little tiny Cookie anymore," Seth said at a Q&A following the screening last Sunday. The nature of the film revealed itself during attempts to record typically clean animation dialogue, he said. "Originally, when we started, it was going to be straight up good recording, with no interruption," said Seth. "But Pete lives in a four-bedroom house with nine kids and 16 dogs, so it's insane to try to record anything. "So eventually, we gave into the insanity and let it go." Will the film have a premiere in Shamattawa? "We have to figure that out. But that's the plan," Seth said. "There's tons of people that are bugging us to see it, but only the family has seen it. But it's going to happen." Another doc with Winnipeg roots, The Nest focuses on a Victorian mansion in the city's Armstrong's Point neighbourhood, a storied house on West Gate that was the childhood home of the film's Winnipeg-born co-director Julietta Singh. She joined forces with co-director Chase Joynt in a lush and often startling investigation of the house's history, which includes being the residence of Métis firebrand Annie Bannatyne, housing a school for deaf people, and serving as home to a Japanese family after wartime internment, in addition to the story of Singh's mother, who raised her mixed-race children there and spent decades restoring the house to its Victorian-era glory while running it as a bed and breakfast. "I left the house as a teenager — actually moved out when I was 15, and I left Winnipeg itself in my early 20s to go to school," said Singh, who now teaches post-colonial literature, along with gender and sexuality studies, at the University of Richmond in Virginia. "Before the film, my experience of the house was a hard one. It was the repository of difficult family memories of filial violence, but also it was a very white and racist neighborhood when we were growing up there," Singh said. "When we moved in, in 1980, we were told very explicitly, 'We don't want your kind around here,'" she said. "So my coming back and forth from Winnipeg has been to visit my mother and to visit that house over many decades, and my experience of the house really shifted through the making of the film." Quiet, rich life on Mennonite farm At 90 years old, Agatha Bock is the unlikely star of Agatha's Almanac, directed by her niece Amalie Atkins. Over its 86-minute running time, we witness Agatha tending to her ancestral Mennonite farm in rural Manitoba, lingering over details both beautiful (buckets of ruby-red strawberries) and subtly hilarious (Agatha likes to put masking tape on objects for easy identification, such as "Very good bucket — 2003"). But viewed as a whole, the film is a testament to living a quiet, rich life. Prior to a screening in Toronto, Agatha recalled the genesis of the film. "She started by taking a few pictures and then eventually decided she would make a film out of it," Bock said. "And so she just kept coming and coming." Atkins, who lives in Saskatoon, said she showed Agatha a rough cut last year, and the subject of the film maintained her honesty in her critique. "I went for her 90th birthday, and I showed her the first hour," Atkins said. "And she said, 'You've got to cut this down!'" There wasn't time then to watch the second hour. "But that was enough feedback," said Atkins, laughing. "So then I went back into the film and kept arranging and cutting and trimming." 'To make a movie about me was very scary' The 10-minute documentary Becoming Ruby is one of six shorts commissioned by Hot Docs to celebrate ordinary Canadians doing extraordinary things. That certainly describes Alex Nguyen, Manitoba's first drag artist-in-residence at Winnipeg's Rainbow Resource Centre in the persona of Ruby Chopstix. Winnipeg director Quan Luong, who, like Nguyen, is of Vietnamese heritage, says it was fun to shoot Ruby in performance, but he was just as compelled by the film's quieter behind-the-scenes moments. "The relationship between Alex and their mom was so beautiful to capture," said Luong. Nguyen said it was a challenge to reveal the person behind Ruby's elaborate makeup. "To make a movie about me was very scary, but very rewarding," Nguyen said, adding it was "very healing to talk about myself for once." "I was imagining my younger self watching it," Nguyen said. "Really, this is a very impactful thing that I wish I had growing up."
Hindustan Times
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Indian documentary 'I, Poppy' bags top award at Canada's Hot Docs
Toronto: An Indian production has won the top award at North America's leading documentary film festival for the second year running. Directed by Vivek Chaudhary, the film I, Poppy, garnered the Best International Feature Documentary award at Hot Docs, in Toronto, on Friday. The film's producers said the film was shot over five years in an 'observational style in the poppy fields of Rajasthan'. 'Going against some powerful forces, both against the opium mafia and the corrupt Narcotics Bureau, the film crew faced considerable challenges but persevered to bring this human story to life,' they added. In a statement, the jury which selected the film for the award, said, 'A film of negotiations – with family, with community, with the systems that limit our choices and bind our fates. For its moving and thoughtfully crafted chronicle of a family navigating conflicts, contradictions and uncomfortable truths, the jury presents the Best International Feature award to I, Poppy.' Since Hot Docs is an Academy Awards qualifying festival for feature documentaries, 'I, Poppy', which is in Hindi and Marwari, will qualify for consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category of the Oscars without the standard theatrical run, provided it complies with Academy rules. Chaudhary's first film, the 45-minute long Goonga Pehelwan or The Mute Wrestler, won the Indian National Film Award for Best Debut Film in 2015. 'I, Poppy' which is 81-minutes in length, is his debut feature documentary. In 2024, the feature, 'Farming The Revolution', from Mumbai-based filmmaker Nishtha Jain, was the winner of the Best International Feature Documentary Award. 'I, Poppy' was one of two Indian productions that had their world premiere at Hot Docs this year. The festival also showcased Marriage Cops, a India-US co-production directed by Shashwati Talukdar and Cheryl Hess, which looked at the Women's Helpline in Dehradun, India, where marriage mediation meets law enforcement in the most unexpected ways. The 2025 edition of Hot Docs presented 113 films from 47 countries. The festival which began on April 24 will conclude on Sunday.
CBC
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How I learned the beauty of a simple life from my 90-year-old aunt who lives alone in rural Manitoba
Cutaways is a personal essay series where Canadian filmmakers tell the story of how their film was made. This Hot Docs 2025 edition by direct or Amalie Atkins focuses on her film Agatha's Almanac The first time I filmed with my aunt, Agatha Bock, she arrived in Saskatoon by train to play a part in one of my earlier films, The Diamond Eye Assembly. Ready for anything, she had brought a suitcase with farmer's sausage wrapped in the Winnipeg Free Press, her red Pyrex bowl, a perogy-cutting pineapple tin and all my grandmother's handmade aprons. She shows up, every time, as her full self. During that project, I realized that in my next film, she should simply be herself, unscripted. Moving through her world already felt cinematic. Agatha's farm is only an hour from where I grew up in rural Manitoba, but it always felt like another world, shadowed by old oaks, thick with ferns and full of domestic rituals that left a lasting imprint on me. Every summer, we'd visit. And after my parents died, I felt a magnetic pull to reconnect with my family's matrilineal Mennonite history, rooted in Ukraine but still very much alive in the rhythms of Agatha's everyday life. I wanted to reconnect with a place that hadn't changed much, where every object — quilt, embroidered pillow, kitchen utensil, garden tool — had been made or held by my family and is still in use on Agatha's farm. There, I sensed something just beneath the surface, an elusive presence I now think of as "the Manitoba Feeling" — fractured histories held in the land, which are felt more than seen. These intangible currents connect us to place, story and each other. As the film progressed, I came to understand how much loss had occurred on the property in my aunt's childhood. Agatha is resilient and unstoppable. She is always on the move — planting, gathering, harvesting, making something, hosting someone or scheming on the phone. She has strong ideas and opinions, and nothing can be wasted. When I was a teenager, Agatha gave my mom a blue-flowered bedspread to pass on to me, and I gave it the classic teenage side-eye. After persistent questioning, I found out she'd pulled it from a box behind a dumpster. To her, it was a perfectly good bedspread. And this makes sense when you consider she was born during the Great Depression, when recycling and reusing items were standard practice, if not crucial for survival. When my dad died, Agatha arrived on the bus in her usual way, armed with jars of home-made chicken noodle soup, reused Styrofoam trays loaded with her famous perogies and iced sugar cookies packed into old tissue boxes, held together with tape. Anytime someone wept, I'd offer them the box. And instead of a tissue, they'd pull out a cookie — pink, yellow or robin's egg blue. In Agatha's world, everything is held together with tape — her chimney (she assures me this is safe!), her leaking water pails, her tools, her linoleum and her windows. Tape, a central motif in the film, not only serves a practical purpose but also as a space to record information she doesn't want to forget: "Good tub from Anne Leadbetter, June 2003." Years before I started the film Agatha's Almanac, my sister and I asked our aunt to teach us some of her processes. She started with her pickle recipe (only the tiniest cucumbers make it into her pickle jars). I noticed the label on her secret ingredient: "Horseradish 1975," the year I was born. Next, she showed us how to make soap. She'd tagged the main ingredient "Good goose fat from mother 1982," referring to my grandmother, who had died when I was 12. It made me wonder if she had a container with "bad goose fat" and, if so, what it would be used for (because in Agatha's house, no goose fat would be thrown away). To tell this story, centred around the life of one woman, I sought out an all-female crew. Through filmmaker Heidi Phillips, I met cinematographer Rhayne Vermette, who brought Charlene Moore on board as sound recordist and Kristiane Church as production coordinator. Agatha immediately welcomed us with plates of varenyky and a list of house rules. We filmed her carving a thick-skinned watermelon for over two hours. No one questioned it — and if they had, I'm not sure I could have explained why it mattered. Later, I found out the watermelon had originated from my grandmother's seeds. They had been saved, stashed and regrown for 37 years. This scene was about more than Agatha's brightly coloured outfit and her sculptural way with a knife — it was a moment that connected the past to the present, a quiet continuity running through the earth of her garden. Another time, we arrived to a cold, dark house after driving through a sudden flurry of snow. Agatha's power was out. Luckily, we were relying mostly on natural light throughout the film. Every time a complicated situation presented itself, we found ways to keep going. We worked so well together, with ease and a collaborative spirit. What began as a short personal experiment grew into so much more. After the first shoot with the watermelon, I was hooked. After each shoot, I matched the 16-mm film with audio. Somewhere along the way, I realized this wasn't going to be a short anymore, but a multi-chapter project. The structure of an almanac emerged, exploring both the visible and the unseen aspects of Agatha's world. That winter, I shot 11 rolls of film: macro close-ups of hoarfrost, ice fog swirling off the river in –40 C cold and quilts floating on a line against the snow. The colder the winter, the more beautiful the footage. With high hopes, I sent the film to Negativeland, a lab in New York. The box was delivered on a Saturday, and somebody stole it before it could be collected on the Monday. I lost the winter. And it wasn't just a technical setback. It felt like a disruption of time, as if a part of Agatha's world was gone. Four chapters were screened in an exhibition at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska and rotated with the seasons. I kept going. Filming as many of Agatha's processes as possible became an obsession. When I realized I had gathered well over two hours of footage, I realized it was going to be a feature. I made it to the farm every spring, summer or fall, sometimes with the crew, sometimes alone. Last July, I filmed the final roll: Agatha wandering through the yard in her hip waders, the ones she wears when the basement floods. What I observed in those six years was Agatha's devotion — to her garden and her particular ways of life — her generosity and her care. She shows that ritual doesn't need to be grand to be sacred. Her way of moving through the world with purpose, frugality and intention is the foundation of this film.
