ACF - Asian Cinema Fund

2024 Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund

LIST How Love Moves

Synopsis

Mohammad Shameem belongs to a family of gravekeepers. From an early age, he began accompanying his father and grandfather to the Delhi Gate Cemetery, a 150 year old graveyard. A lifetime spent in the graveyard has given Shameem (now 40) a very particular philosophical approach towards death.
The film meets Shameem at a perilous moment. A vandal has been infiltrating the graveyard. Shameem leads the search for this vandal, keeping a vigil at night, protecting the graves. If the vandal ended up defiling any of the graves, it could cause significant social distress and tension.
Delhi recently witnessed exceptional trauma, during the Covid pandemic. The cemetery saw 3000 burials in two weeks alone in April 2021. With just an earthmover machine for company, Shameem single handedly buried thousands of unclaimed and unaccompanied bodies.
This experience transformed Shameem. He now lives inside the graveyard, in a makeshift structure close to the Covid graves; he feels most at peace here. This Covid section is still largely avoided by many cemetery staff and most visitors, and seems to carry a lingering dread.
The extreme immersion in his work has badly damaged Shameem’s personal life. His relationship with his wife became extremely strained. Shameem now seems to exist purely to fulfil his role as the guardian of the link between the living and the dead.
This is the story of contemporary Delhi, teetering on the brink of renewed trauma, narrated through the unlikely site of a cemetery, and its timeless conscience keeper.

Director's Note

As a filmmaker, the idea of the invisible has always fascinated me. How does one represent moments that are not part of the visual record. This film was inspired by the invisible labor of Shamim, an unlikely custodian of the dignity of the dead and living. For me, the graveyard is more than a site of mourning and remembrance, it’s a mini world standing between the living and the dead.
Death as the threshold of vision is something I wanted to explore, particularly in light of the recent traumatic events in Delhi. Chief among them was the Covid pandemic, which left a historical scar on Delhi’s collective memory.
The conviction, physical and emotional labour of figures like Shameem make difficult times in cities liveable. To think of them and with them, then is a way of layering our own understanding of what constitutes life and makes it worth living.

Still Cut

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