‘Indian’ Cinema that Year-Enders will Never Talk About…

(extract)
By Utpal Borpujari •
Dec 26th, 2008 •

“Yarwng (Roots)” by Joseph Pulinthanath

Another film that goes beyond the mundane is Joseph Pulinthanath’s Yarwng (Roots). Only the third film in Tripura’s tribal Kokborok language - the second one in that language, Mathia, too was made a few years ago by the same director - Yarwng is a story of how so-called development negatively impacts the lives of those people who never gets the taste the fruits of development. The backdrop of the film is a real-life incident of displacement of about 60,000 tribals in the mid 1970s due to the construction of a dam in Tripura in North-East India (the displaced lot, incidentally, have become permanent vagabonds as they were never rehabilitated by the government), and Pulinthanath, a priest from Kerala who has settled down in Tripura and is associated with Church-backed efforts to give access to education to the people in the remote state, has told the larger story through the tale of unrequited love of a young couple who were forced to separate by the rising waters of the dammed river. Made with a limited budget as Tripura does not even have proper facilities to take the film to the very people on whose lives it is made, Yarwng scores through its portrayal of a simple lot of people who never get to know why they got displaced from the land of their ancestors for the benefit of those who are never bothered about them, and perhaps don’t even know about their existence. The film will surely find resonance in many parts of the world as it is a story that has happened in real life - many times over, and in many countries.

http://dearcinema.com/%E2%80%98indian%E2%80%99-cinema-that-year-enders-will-never-talk-about/