I for India.

"I for India isn't content just to mold years of personal footage into a fascinating drama, as we've already seen in such camcorder-obsessed tales of domestic dysfunction as Capturing the Friedmans and Tarnation," writes Aaron Hillis in the Voice. "[T]he film manages to lyrically explore the meaning of filial responsibility with a lasting but unsentimental tenderness. November seems late enough to call this one of the richest documentaries of the year."

"When Dr Yash Pal Suri, the filmmaker's father, left India for England in 1965, he remained in touch with his parents and siblings by using matching sets of Super 8-millimeter cameras and audiotape recorders," explains Jeannette Catsoulis in the New York Times. "The resulting missives, lovingly shaped by the filmmaker into four decades of familial intimacy, form the core of a movie that's both deeply personal and surprisingly universal."

Updated through 11/15.

"I for India speaks painfully to the woes of familial separation brought about by immigration (bringing to mind the devastating Balseros), showcasing both decades-old footage recorded by Yash and his family as well as official BBC programs concerning the growing population of foreigners," writes Rob Humanick in Slant. "The film, directed by Yash's daughter Sandhya Suri, is poignant in its evocation of a single family's fractured identity, but it is this very approach that gives its core cinematic leanings such a universal quality; hazy home-movie footage appears to flow as if out of some dreamlike ether, while the recorded voices of Yash and his family are not unlike unseen, disembodied spirits echoing across the cosmos."

Update, 11/15: Sez Anthony Kaufman: "This Weekend's NYC Must-See."

Posted by dwhudson at November 14, 2007 5:01 AM