Film critic Utpal Datta explores Mazhar Q. Kamran’s Safar Mein Shahar, examining how Mumbai emerges not merely as a setting but as a living character shaped by memory, migration, solitude, and intersecting journeys. 

When multiple films are made around a specific city, that city ceases to be a mere backdrop — it gradually emerges as an active participant in the narrative, carrying its own psychology, memories, and social resonances. Historical shifts often find clear reflection in such films.

In Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City, post-war Rome appeared in all its crisis and psychological fracture. Later, Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita portrayed the emptiness and moral drift of modernity within the same city, set against a changing historical landscape. Similarly, the middle-class anxieties, social instability, and political tensions of Kolkata were articulated in Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar and Mrinal Sen's Calcutta 71. Ram Gopal Varma's Satya revealed Mumbai's dreams, struggles, migrant realities, and underworld complexities.

In such works, a city often becomes a metaphor for aspiration, conflict, and breakdown — standing in for the nation itself. Directors who repeatedly explore the same city create a kind of "urban authorship" in which geography and ideology merge. Even soundscapes — the tram bells of Kolkata, the traffic of Rome, the relentless rhythm of Mumbai's local trains — shape a city's cinematic identity, transforming it into a lived experience.

Mumbai as Narrative Space in Safar Mein Shahar

Numerous films have set their stories in Mumbai, presenting its varied forms and problems. The latest addition to this lineage is Mazhar Q. Kamran's Safar Mein Shahar. What distinguishes this film is that Mumbai is not simply a background — it is a central character, holding countless stories within itself. Kamran himself wrote the screenplay, in collaboration with Pramod Singh.

The film opens with an extreme wide shot: the vast sea, waves striking against towering buildings along the shore. Massive structures, busy roads, local trains — yet from a distance, the city appears silent, introspective, almost withdrawn into itself. Over these images, an off-screen voice says: “Twenty-one million people live in this city — and so do I.” He has been observing some of its inhabitants and now wishes to tell their stories. “It is three in the morning,” he begins.

The voice does not belong to any visible character; it is that of an observer. The title, Safar Mein Shahar — the city in journey — raises a question: the narrator lives here and is not a traveller, so whose journey is this? As the question lingers, we see a local train moving through darkness, taxis rushing along illuminated roads, narrow lanes where people sleep, and a young man working the night shift. Parts of the city that never sleep are still awake.

Intersecting Lives and Inner Journeys

An affluent, solitary elderly man rises from bed. A domestic worker prepares to leave for her home at the city's outskirts. A young man with a camera walks through a narrow lane. A plane lands; a woman arrives and takes a taxi. Journeys begin. The film unfolds as movement — towards specific destinations, yet also towards something interior.

The characters are varied: an elderly father whose son lives abroad; a young journalist seeking to establish herself in Mumbai; a woman returning from overseas for her father's second marriage; a domestic worker; taxi drivers of different ages; a lower-middle-class youth aspiring to be a filmmaker, and the list goes on. Their cultural and economic backgrounds differ, yet they share two things — a desire to engage with life in Mumbai and the fact that each is on a journey. It is a journey within the city, yet ultimately towards an inner, perhaps long-unopened chamber of the self. Safar Mein Shahar becomes a portrait of these intersecting yet solitary lives.

The film does not follow a conventional linear narrative. “Story” here is not a chain of events but an accumulation of small, lived experiences. At first glance, these fragments may appear disconnected; yet philosophically, their very discontinuity suggests a deeper unity. Each personal narrative adds a layer to the city's existence. Memory, desire, and pain together form a collective consciousness. The city is not architecture or geography alone — it is an ongoing archive of experience. Many scenes unfold inside moving taxis, with the shifting city visible outside and intimate conversations unfolding within.

Existential Urban Isolation

The stories share no direct links beyond the act of journeying. Toward the end, several characters converge, almost accidentally, in a restaurant, moving the film toward a quiet climax. A stand-up comedian remarks casually: “In Mumbai, everyone is running — but no one seems to arrive.” The line captures the existential drift of urban life with quiet precision.

There is no conventional narrative arc, no single hero or heroine. The film advances through brief conversations that reveal perspectives and personal crises, while also exposing each character's complex and conflicted relationship with the city. Philosophically, the city appears paradoxical — both the source of problems and the site of possible resolution; a field of human aspiration where dreams and emptiness coexist.

A particularly poignant moment occurs in a conversation with an elderly taxi driver. A young man visiting from a village says, “You have no home here, and nothing left in your village either.” The driver's silence resonates beyond the personal, echoing an existential void. “Home” is no longer geographical — it becomes a restless search within consciousness.

Documentary Realism and Cinematic Craft

The film demands a visual language akin to documentary realism — unembellished and unadorned. The actors' natural presence, colloquial dialogue, unforced gestures, and an alert camera that seems merely to record what it witnesses combine to give the film a vibrant realism. There is no melodramatic flourish; scenes unfold in life's own rhythm, allowing fiction to generate a documentary-like immediacy.

The film consciously avoids Mumbai's iconic landmarks — the Gateway of India, Marine Drive, and similar clichés. Instead, it foregrounds lesser-known, everyday spaces that not only advance the narrative but evoke the true rhythm of urban life. A century-old restaurant, for instance, evokes a character's nostalgia while also embodying the city's layered heritage. These locations are not decorative backdrops but integral to the city's cinematic soul.

Dialogue by Pramod Singh plays a crucial role in articulating the film's subtle meanings. Though primarily in Hindi, it incorporates Marathi and English where required. Variations in accent reflect regional and social identities, adding depth to characterisation. Even viewers for whom Hindi is not a mother tongue can sense these nuances. At times, however, certain characters might have benefited from additional visual cues to enhance clarity and deepen the film's artistic resonance.

Cinematography forms one of the film's core strengths. With a documentary sensibility, it captures the thematic restlessness and inner tension with remarkable subtlety. The interplay of day and night light aligns seamlessly with the film's emotional landscape, revealing the aesthetic sensitivity of both the director and the cinematographer.

Editor Aseem Sinha's contribution is equally significant. Seemingly disconnected scenes are woven together with fluidity, maintaining narrative cohesion. Rapidly shifting perspectives in moving vehicle shots never feel jarring. The extended restaurant sequence near the end — interweaving fragments of multiple conversations — preserves mood and rhythm with admirable restraint. Aside from minor continuity lapses in vehicle movement, the overall poetic editing demonstrates fine craftsmanship.

A Quietly Radical Urban Film

Taken as a whole, Safar Mein Shahar is a film that rewards patience. It does not offer the satisfactions of conventional storytelling — no hero's triumph, no tidy resolution. What it offers instead is something rarer: the sensation of having spent time with a city and its people, of having glimpsed, however briefly, the interior lives that the noise and pace of urban existence tend to conceal.

In an era when Indian cinema increasingly gravitates toward spectacle and scale, this film's quiet insistence on the ordinary feels both necessary and courageous. Mazhar Q. Kamran has made a work that is experimental in form yet deeply humane in spirit — marked by its urban gaze, its refusal of conventional storytelling structures, and its impartial engagement with everyday realities. Safar Mein Shahar deserves a distinctive and lasting place in the history of Indian cinema.

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