Nasir (2020)

Directed by: Arun Karthick | 78 minutes | drama | Actors: Valavane Koumarane, Sudha Ranganathan, Balasubramanian, Jensan Diwakar, Gayathri, Abdul Jaffar, Jaikumar, Meena, Vikramadityan Nambi, Niveditha, Prabanchan, Prasanna, Yasmin Rahman, Rajesh, Bharath Rawal, Valli Revathi, Rifa, Saahitymata, Saahitymata Bakkiyam Sankar, Sharadha, Umavathi

About eighty percent of the Indian population is Hindu. As a Muslim, Christian or atheist you are greatly in the minority there. The growing threat of Hindu extremist violence does not make things any easier. Filmmaker Arun Karthik shows how dangerous that can be in his poignant feature film ‘Nasir’.

The title character Nasir is a modest man who lives a simple life with his wife in a Muslim neighborhood in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, in southeastern India. He works hard, but is nevertheless poor, there is often nothing to eat. In addition, he also takes care of his sick mother who lives at home and his physically and mentally handicapped cousin.

We observe this immediately sympathetic man for a day and thus get a nice picture of what occupies him and what life looks like for these people. ‘Nasir’ does not build up any tension, but with clever shots of the family’s home, the surroundings, the local pump where people stand in line for water and the shop where Nasir earns his living, Karthik achieves exactly what he envisions has. We see a man who makes the best of the few resources offered to him.

What makes the character different from the average worker is his love of poetry. He writes a beautiful declaration of love for his wife – who is largely absent as she attends the preparations for a wedding and at the request of his colleagues declaims a sensitive poem. At that moment you have already closed the sweet and always positive Nasir in your heart. And only afterwards do you realize that the unrest in the background – which seeps through the film exactly in the ‘wallpaper’-like way in which the Indian inhabitants will also experience this – has been a harbinger of that heartbreaking ending.

The cinematography is world class; the brighter than bright colors, the use of light and shadow, the compositions are to die for. Add to this the somewhat unusual 4:3 aspect ratio for films (with rounded corners) and you understand why this young promising director won the NETPAC Award (prize for the best Asian feature film) at the IFFR in 2020. ‘Nasir’ is authentic, urgent and captures the beauty and injustice of life in just 78 minutes.