“All That Breathes" at the Figge Art Museum -- January 21.
Sunday, January 21, 3 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
A 2023 Academy Award nominee that currently boasts a 99-percent “freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Shaunak Sen's documentary All That Breathes serves as the first presentation in 2024 QC Environmental Film Series hosted by River Action, its January screening at Davenport's Figge Art Museum demonstrating why the Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Fienberg decreed the film "one of the more dreamily provocative documentaries I’ve ever seen.”
As All That Breathes details, siblings Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad were raised in New Delhi looking at a sky speckled with black kites, and watching as relatives tossed meat up to these birds of prey. Muslim belief held that feeding the kites would expel troubles. Now, however, birds are falling from the polluted, opaque skies of New Delhi, and the two brothers have made it their life’s work to care for the injured black kites, as the majestic raptors are essential in controlling vermin in the urban ecosystem. Working from a makeshift bird hospital in their tiny basement clinic in Wazirabad, Delhi, 20,000 raptors have thus far been cured over the last 20 years, and impressed with the brothers' dedication and the spirit, producer/director Shaunak Sen decided to film them. As he said, "I am drawn by the subject of the interconnectedness of an ecosystem – one that humans are a part of, not apart from. How man, animals share space and become part of the whole. It is a valuable story."
The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2022, where it won Grand Jury Prize in World Cinema Documentary Competition. All That Breathes also had a screening at Cannes Film Festival in the special screening section, where it won the Golden Eye, and the film was later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film, its additional laurels including prizes from the American Society of Cinematographers, the Gotham Awards, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Reviewing for Spirituality & Health, Bilge Ebiri wrote, "Stunningly filmed, the film [is] as gorgeous as it is ambitious, as stirring as it is terrifying." And Variety's Dennis Harvey raved, "With a tone more melancholic and charming than one might expect given the various crises at play here, Sen's deceptively casual observational documentary prefers dwelling on resistance and resilience to pronouncements of doom."
All That Breathes will be shown in the Figge Art Museum's John Deere Auditorium on January 21, admission to the 3 p.m. screening is $7 with students admitted free, and a six-movie season pass for the 2024 QC Environmental Film Series is available for $25. For more information and tickets, call (563)322-2926 and visit RiverAction.org/filmseries.
