Labour of Love

Aditya Vikram Sengupta : 2014
Asha jaoar majhe

The spiralling recession that hit India peaked a few years ago. Thousands of people lost their jobs without notice. Faced with financial uncertainty, a married couple living in a disintegrating district of Kolkata is under great pressure. They could lose their jobs at any time. Their lives are filled with an endless cycle of shift work and domestic routine, with long stretches of waiting in the silence of an empty house. These are no conditions for love to blossom. They are forced to negotiate between expectations and reality. They try to manifest their love wherever they can, through little acts like fixing a button or cooking for two. How do you trick time to be able to spend it together? Told almost without words, this is a story about two people during an economic crisis. Under constant pressure to sustain their livelihood, they share each other's solitude in pursuit of a distant dream that visits them briefly every morning. Aditya Vikram Sengupta's first feature won the award for Best Director of a Debut Film when it premiered at Venice Days 2014.