CycleMahesh

Four years after cycling two thousand kilometres home during the first Covid lockdown, construction worker Mahesh becomes the subject of a film about his journey. Yet as shooting ends and he returns to the labyrinth of his job site, a quieter portrait emerges. Blending fact and fiction, this film-within-a-film reflects on migrant labour and the ethics of looking.

Suhel Banerjee: ‘This has been a difficult film to make, because it tells a difficult story. At its centre is the ordinary Indian, within whom exists a multitude of stories, shaped by years of struggle against poverty and illuminated by the aura of mythology, music, and art. It is this inherited wisdom that I most want reflected in my work.’