A keenly observed class drama shown through the eyes of a child, Shalini Adnani’s “” overcomes its characters’ narrow construction through its brooding intensity. Set against a sand-mining crisis in modern India, it tells of a 12-year-old British Asian girl, Maya (Maya Mehta), who returns to the country to join her industrialist father Rohan (Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub), and bears witness to a routine accident in his line of work. As notions of justice, power and inequity begin to shade her peripheral vision, Maya is torn between speaking out and adhering to the moral compartmentalization that goes hand in hand with her family’s generational success.
Adnani, a Chilean-born Londoner of Indian descent, draws on her memories of visiting India as a young outsider in crafting the film’s atmosphere, and her protagonist’s confined perspective. Such an approach runs the risk of gawking at an unfamiliar people, their hegemonies and their ways of life, even with the best intentions. But by rooting her tale in Maya’s family ties, the writer-director explores the complicity of well-to-do South Asian diasporas, and the foundations that afford them the luxury of emigrating in the first place. It begins with a brief, poetic prologue set decades ago — seemingly outside of time — as obscured day-laborers sift through sandy riverbanks and discover an enormous diamond. Their faces remain hidden, as a debate ensues about whether they should alert their boss to its discovery.
