Thought Factory

ALTERNATIVE ENTERTAINMENT: GOUTAM GHOSH’S BOLD PRAYER

by Monojit Lahiri April 2 2025, 12:00 am Estimated Reading Time: 3 mins, 1 sec

Goutam Ghosh’s Parikrama redefines progress, blending conscience with craft to expose the human cost of modern development and displacement. This Indo-Italian co-production lives up to Godard’s classic definition of cinema—Truth at 24 frames per second, says Monojit Lahiri.  

Celebrated filmmaker Goutam Ghosh returns with Parikrama, a powerful film that explores the human cost of development and displacement along the Narmada basin. Premiered at the Kolkata International Film Festival and recently screened at Delhi's Habitat Centre, Parikrama has captivated audiences with its compelling narrative and soulful storytelling. Through the eyes of an Italian filmmaker documenting river pilgrims, Ghosh blends metaphor with realism to reflect on progress, ecology, and loss. Marked by Ghosh’s signature moral and technical precision, the film reaffirms his status as a master of socially conscious cinema in India.

Filmmaker Goutam Ghosh has always been an iconoclast, maverick, rebel, and non-conformist, but has done so without soapbox fireworks or high-voltage flag-waving. There are three types of people who inhabit our planet—the Buyer, the Bought, and those who turn away to single-mindedly follow their inner voice and sensibilities. Powerfully yet sensitively fusing craft and scholarship with conscience, the maker of nationally and internationally award-winning films now unspools his latest work, Parikrama. It premiered at last year’s prestigious Kolkata International Film Festival and recently held a screening at Delhi’s Habitat Centre to enthusiastic and appreciative audiences—lovers of true-blue quality cinema.

At a time when—as writer Sharad Ray so aptly describes—actors trade craft for stardom, and politically correct (right-wing?) narratives ride on regressive blockbusters, genuine talent frequently makes a silent exit through the back door or stands in a long line of like-minded people waiting for their bed in the neighbourhood ICU!

Ghosh, forever his own man, adds yet another significant feather to his feather-heavy cap. Passion, purpose, and perspective power Parikrama, where he speaks of this tenuous and tricky thing called progress, which is forever lauded as an exciting gateway to the good life but frequently ends up as a deadly roadblock—a devious Frankenstein—devouring everything in its way in the name of development and prosperity. Here, the narrative focuses on the impact on the Narmada basin, relating to human life, ecology, and environment.

The film follows an Italian filmmaker, Alex, whose area of interest is the environment. His plan is to make a documentary on pilgrims who cruise, drift, meander, ramble, and saunter along the river—but alas, the river has taken a hit—progress, development calling?—due to the intervention of dams. Metaphors and allegories abound in Ghosh's storytelling—depicting people losing their lands and livelihoods, displacement, the motherless, and another without his motherland; finally, the Italian gaze on this side of Incredible India!

As always in Ghosh’s films, the performances depend not on personality—glamorous Chitrangada Singh is a perfect example—but totally on characterization, graced with his trademark technical virtuosity.

Embedded with a secure moral centre, his film—to the sensitive, open, and informed—is bound to invade parts of the soul few can dream of reaching. His take on the other side of developmental politics, by movingly playing it out in a relatable and human way with characters as catalysts, once again places Goutam Ghosh and Parikrama in a unique space: a filmmaker whose material is like a prayer, telling us that this is what real, rooted, meaningful cinema is and can be, no matter how corrupt, brainwashed, and far in our cynicism we may stray…