‘Our Share of Sand’ Review: A Brooding Indian Social Drama Told Through the Eyes of a Young Girl

Shalini Adnani’s debut feature turns a diasporic gaze into an autocritique of pervasive structures.

By Siddhant Adlakha

Siddhant Adlakha

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A keenly observed class drama shown through the eyes of a child, Shalini Adnani’s “Our Share of Sand” overcomes its characters’ narrow construction through its brooding intensity. Set against a sand-mining crisis in modern India, it tells of a 12-year-old British Asian girl, Maya (Maya Mehta), who returns to the country to join her industrialist father Rohan (Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub), and bears witness to a routine accident in his line of work. As notions of justice, power and inequity begin to shade her peripheral vision, Maya is torn between speaking out and adhering to the moral compartmentalization that goes hand in hand with her family’s generational success.

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