As the world faces increasing climate crises, anxiety and hope have become two completely different anchors for those seeking change. In South Asia, where India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh are facing immense risks of completely disappearing, in some low-lying parts of the countries, due to the impacts of climate change, questions about the future have become critical. Specifically in India’s cities pollution has become a crisis, making the air quality drastically decrease and ultimately making the living conditions unhealthy for the average person, especially those with increased risks. Shaunak Sen’s powerful new documentary, All That Breathes, finds its camera in the heart of New Delhi to capture two brothers’ attempts to save birds from these conditions.
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Sen, a filmmaker who has only made one other full-length documentary, struck an emotional chord with the release of All That Breathes. His previous work, Cities of Sleep, tackles a different kind of issue going on in Delhi: homelessness and the ability to sleep. It was his first full-length documentary. Cities of Sleep won several awards at international film festivals, but All That Breathes, which finds success out of tragedy, is a heartfelt portrait of the contemporary era and the special relationship between humans and animals. Certainly, it will not be the last documentary taking on similar subjects.
The documentary, which had its first screening at Cannes Film Festival in 2022, has been gaining traction ever since then. It would take home the Golden Eye, an award dedicated to the best documentary screened at the festival, from Cannes, and, in 2023, made the final shortlist for Best Documentary Feature for the Academy Awards. All That Breathes continued to find its way around the world in film festivals then found a home with HBO Documentaries for release on the streaming platform HBO Max in the United States. Hopefully, with the momentum he has received in the past year, Sen will continue to add his voice as a documentary filmmaker to the global stage.
Two Brothers Save Birds
Rise Films
The subjects of All That Breathes are Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud, two brothers who combined their passions to found the Wildlife Rescue, an organization that rescues birds off of the streets of Delhi and nurses them back to health. Together with their associate Salik Rehman, the trio offers a tender-hearted service to animals that most people would not look twice at on the streets. They specifically care for black kites, a bird of prey that is common in the region, making them considered to be a nuisance by everyday people. But as the documentary shows, these three do not care for the black kite’s reputation, or other raptors, and will put their bodies at risk to give care to them. It is estimated by The New York Times in 2020 that the trio will manage to treat approximately 2,000 birds a year. All That Breathes runs for an hour and a half, and it covers quite a bit of ground in its brief run time. The three men are constantly working to find and work on injured birds, and the documentary follows them on the streets as they look for their next rescue. Behind closed doors, the brothers discuss the situation at hand. Due to the increasing pollution in the city, more birds are starting to become injured and sick. It has become a problem larger than themselves, and if they want to do more, then they need funding. It would be rash to claim that All That Breathes is merely a documentary about saving birds. It would seem easy to classify All That Breathes as a movie about human greed and suffering, and animals being caught in between all of these struggles as collateral damage.
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The Wildlife Rescue, which has been in operation for over twenty years, finds itself in sticky situations when applying for grants and funding to continue its operations. The current political climate of the part of India they are working in is tense, as increasing nationalism and violence are creating a bitter divide between Hindus and Muslims. Even in the city where they are operating, political and ideological-based violence has become rampant, exposing a different kind of issue that is not only happening to birds. The humans, too, have turned on each other, leaving wounded and dead bodies on the streets. Soon, New Delhi will be inhabitable to everyone, not just animals. This is increasingly becoming a grim reality all over the world, especially in countries that do not have as much wealth as the West.
While it may seem easy to do their job in theory, the red tape and legislation against non-Hindus, especially Muslims, are preventing the brothers from doing the amount of work they want and need to do. As they work on a bird in one of the shots from the beginning, they joke about how they read about a nuclear war online, asking how the radiation might affect the birds. They might be smiling and joking, but the underlying subtext becomes clear: the current situation for humans, as well as the environmental crisis for all living things, might end up being the very thing they are joking about. Their work understands this, though, and they are willing to sacrifice having more comfortable lives and jobs to keep the rescue going.
A Devastating, Yet Effective Documentary
Rise Films
In the opening scenes of All That Breathes, there are no birds. There are rats, dogs, and signs of people wandering around on the streets, but no sign of what the documentary will soon come to focus on completely. This is a simple series of establishing shots in the beginning, but they are a subtle reminder that even in a city like Delhi, which seems like an urban metropolis, there are other forms of life co-existing with the people who live and work there. They may be hard to forget daily, but they are still there. That is what makes the brothers’ mission so heart-warming–they can look to the shadows and rescue the birds of prey that others may not take a glance at while passing by. At its core, All That Breathes is a character study that focuses on the lives of its protagonists. It is cinematic, offering stunning shots of nature that feel like they belong in a movie, clearly juxtaposing against the metropolitan aesthetics of New Delhi in the 2020s. New Delhi, like many of India’s other urban centers, suffers from some of the worst pollution in the world. Since the brothers often treat birds as prey, the camera moves upwards to capture them while flying in the sky, showing how no matter how high or far they go, they cannot escape the pollution and smog that covers the city.
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A lot could go wrong in a documentary about nature, relying on the tropes and visuals audiences are already familiar with to tug on the heartstrings. But in All That Breathes, it represents life in the purest forms. Not everything is easy during these processes, but, at the end of the day, it is all about the journey of getting to this point. The title comes from a teaching the brothers’ mother would tell them as children, paving the path for generosity and kindness for even the smallest beings. There are some key takeaways from this documentary, forcing its viewers to look at themselves and reflect on what they are doing with their own lives. Are they noticing the local nature and creatures, or ignoring them on the daily commute? This documentary is a reminder of the poetry surrounding everyone even when one is not looking for it.
There are many good reasons why many believe All That Breathes was one of the top documentaries, if not one of the top films, to come out in 2022. It is poetic and breathtaking at times, offering many themes and questions to mull over once the screen fades to black. The documentary takes its time in getting through all of the content it has laid out for us, making the pacing a bit uneven toward the end. But even as sewage floods the brothers’ floors, the threat of a nuclear war being touted on the televisions around them, the show must go on. And on it goes, offering a slice of hope about the future as these three continue to march on and rescue birds falling out of the sky due to environmental degradation.
All That Breathes is available to stream in the United States on HBO Max as of February 7, 2023.
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