WHICH COLOUR?

WHICH COLOUR?, an assured and trailblazing directorial debut by Shahrukhkhan Chavada, depicts the quotidian life of an extended working-class family in a Muslim quarter in the heart of Ahmedabad on what turns out to be a historic day. We see a woman waking up early to do household chores, her husband trying to procure funds to buy an auto-rickshaw, and their children playing gender-segregated games. Public spaces come alive with shrieking middle-schoolers, a mother folds clothes with a daughter who has made it out of the ghetto, a girl sleeps over at her grandparents'' place – routines that become electrifying expressions of communal life. Chavada''s self-aware, theatrical framing blends fiction and reality, as does the use of non-professional actors in long, intimate shots. In addition, it is rare to see Indian films centered on markedly Muslim characters, and those that don''t employ these characters primarily as objects of violence and social injustice are rarer. In WHICH COLOUR?, Muslim bodies exist in an existential autonomy, untouched by dramatic aggression and capable of accessing a whole range of human experience.