Mehsampur

4/28/2024

Imitiaz Ali's _Chamkila_ led me to hunt this down. Went in thinking this was a documentary on his life and death, and within like 5-10 mins you realise it's not. Sure enough, sites list this as either drama or docu-drama or docu-fiction or if you believe Google, it's drama/short. It's neither. It has real-life characters playing a fictionalised act, and fictional characters chasing the ghosts of slain real-life people. The legend or the ghosts these characters are after are very larger than life and this has an impact on the film we watch as it gets into a very surreal territory at most times, blending what is real and unreal... And as if it was predestined to, the film eventually mutates itself into a ghost story of its own. And this is just a tiny bit of many experiments this film has