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Naman Ramachandran
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Red Falcon Films Umair Bilal spent months in Sehwan, Pakistan, trying to direct a documentary. Then he gave up.
“Every time I tried to impose that logic onto Sehwan, it felt like I was working against the place rather than with it,” the Pakistani filmmaker tells Variety of his debut feature, “As Light as Air,” which premieres in Semaine de la Critique at the 79th Locarno Film Festival. What began as an attempt to find characters and structure inside the Sufi shrine town instead became a 65-minute surrender to its rhythm – no plot, no protagonist, just pilgrims, malangs – wandering ascetics who have given up conventional life to devote themselves to the shrine – and the ecstatic communal trance of the dhamal.
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