In India, farming is a lethally dangerous profession, with suicides in the agricultural sector rising to epidemic levels in recent years. In the western state of Maharashtra alone, more than 70,000 farmers and farm workers have taken their own lives in the last three decades, peaking at around seven per day for much of 2023. In his debut feature, Marching in the Dark, Indian director Kinshuk Surjan puts a human face on this nationwide tragedy. But he also trains his focus on its wider ripple effects, specifically on the widows that these dead men leave behind, women who subsequently suffer the multiple wounding effects of grief, poverty and social exclusion.
This topic may sound bleak on paper but Marching in the Dark proves to be an absorbing, moving, elegantly shot and surprisingly life-affirming film. It also has a sharp political agenda, exposing the shockingly lowly status of widows in much of India. This rousing feminist angle should help it find an audience beyond local and specialist interest groups. Fresh from earning a Special Mention from the Zurich Film Festival jury, it screens at Dok Leipzig this week in the Audience Competition section. It has also been shortlisted in the Best Documentary category for the European Film Awards, which take place in Lucerne on December 7.
The central protagonist of Marching in the Dark is Sanjivani Bhure, a 33-year-old widow in rural Maharashtra whose husband took his own life eight years ago. Like thousands involved in farming, the pressure of mounting debts, collapsing food prices and deepening depression simply became too heavy a burden for him. Left behind with two young children to raise, Sanjivani is now living on her brother-in-law’s family farm, scraping a meagre living by working for him, supplemented by occasional freelance jobs.
Surjan paints a quietly devastating picture of Sanjivani’s fate, and by extension that of millions more women in her position. Despite being legally responsible for her late husband’s debts, she does not fully inherit his property, Indeed, widows in India typically need a male relative to handle official financial matters related to their bereavement. Relegated to semi-invisible outcast status by social and religious norms, these women risk ostracism if they attend celebratory gatherings, retain their wedding jewellery, or have the audacity to remarry.
But Sanjivani is quietly challenging these conservative conventions, defying society’s low expectations of her by taking educational exams and pursing a part-time job assisting at a medical clinic. Unbeknownst to her disapproving extended family, she also sneaks away to attend a grief counselling group run by the Manaswini Foundation, an NGO with a mission to support, empower and educate underprivileged women and girls.
These collective discussion scenes are the least overtly dramatic in the film, but they crackle with pent-up anger and latent political energy. It is here that Sanjivani and her fellow widows share not just emotional support but a mounting resentment towards the patriarchal double standards that have amplified their family tragedies. While they mourn menfolk who often drank heavily, cheated and abused them, they remain stoic mothers and breadwinners, juggling childcare and huge financial challenges. “Stop crying and start fighting,” one woman tells her fellow survivors. “You have to live for yourself,” another proclaims. “So what if he’s gone? You only get to see this world once!”
Some of the closely observed conversational scenes in Marching in the Dark feel almost too dramatically convenient, as if they were scripted and staged. Even so, Surjan handles most of these interactions with great sensitivity, a healthy level of journalistic detachment, and a keen eye for visual poetry. Precisely composed static shots of candlelit interiors, dusty fields at sunset, and starkly beautiful rural landscapes lend this production an elevated art-house look.
The film’s pro-feminist message is also pleasingly free of simplistic polemic, and tempered with empathy for the wider victims of this ongoing economic tragedy. While the women and their struggles remain centre stage, Surjan also shows male farmers reacting with rage, frustration and despair at their latest crop failures and ruinously low prices.
Impassive and soft-spoken, Sanjivani is Surjan’s secret weapon in humanising this dark, dry subject matter. Her beatific face proves magnetic on camera, emoting wordlessly, radiating quiet determination behind her Mona Lisa smile. Marching in the Dark is dedicated to the 400,000 grieving women affected by farming suicides in India over the last 20 years.
Director, screenwriter: Kinshuk Surjan
Cinematography: Leena Patoli, Carl Rottiers, Vishal Vittal
Editing: Joëlle Alexis
Producers: Evelien De Graef, Hanne Phlypo
Sound: Puneet Dwivedi, Imtiyaz Jumnalkar
Sound design: Mark Glynne, Olmo van Straalen
Production company: Clin d’Oeil films, Belgium
World sales: Lightdox, France
Venue: Dok Leipzig Film Festival (Audience Competition)
In Marathi
109 minutes
