Bilal is three, and he can see. So can his younger brother Hamza. His parents Shamim and Jharna are blind. The 88 -minute documentary on their lives that director Saurav Sarangi shoots over a year is a superb example of being there-yet-not-there style of fly-on-the-wall filmmaking. Most of it is shot in a dark room in crowded neighbourhood in Kolkata, where the four live-eat and sleep and cook and squabble.

As the film tracks Shamim and Jharna’s attempts at trying to rise above grinding poverty, you realise something astonishing : there is not a shred of condescension or patronage that comes through, something that gets transmitted so easily when all power is vested in the man behind the camera, whose subjects are so clearly powerless. The level of trust and intimacy the subjects share with the man filming them is evident in each frame, and makes for heartwarming cinema.

The story behind the story is equally interesting. The Kolkata-based director was steered, quite inadvertently, in Bilal’s direction, and was immediately entranced by the boy, and his relationship with his parents, and brother. At two-and-a-half, Bilal is still too young to understand the full meaning and import of being blind, but he knows the consequences : his parents have no time to cuddle or coddle him, or his brother, he has to learn to help himself at his tender age. He is also turned into a care-giver to his younger brother, and we know that he will be a true big brother to his baby sister, who comes along just as the film is about to end.

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