Television review In his essayist documentary Invisible Demons, Rahul Jain shows how air pollution and climate change have made life unbearable in India’s big cities

Culture|Television review

Imagery from modern India are strong. There are huge dirty cities there, people live cramped and many of them on the street in poverty. The effects of the corona pandemic are not even daring to think about.

At the same time, it is also known that the Indian economy is growing at a rapid pace. But at what price?

Indian Rahul Jain previously made a documentary Machines, where he went to a textile factory with a camera and showed – up close – what a job there is. After seeing it, one cannot help but think about how one’s own cheap clothes are made.

Jain has studied in the United States, but he returned to his home country on the following subject. Invisible Demons in the documentary, he again shows what he can do, this time about air pollution, even though they are invisible, as the name of the film suggests. However, he tries to make even the particles appear in the picture. Invisible arrows destroy people’s lungs.

Born in 1991, Jain is going through a change that has taken place in her 30 years. Along with the increase in pollution, the climate is also changing, and today India suffers from terrible heat waves during which the temperature stays close to 50 degrees for up to a month.

When the refreshing monsoon rains finally begin, they will be followed by massive floods all over the country.

Jainin the style is essayistically calm. The information is tightly packed and presented here by a Delhi-based TV reporter whose work is being monitored.

By the way, the pictures speak for themselves, as do the people, even the poorest, who fully understand what it is all about and how the situation is only getting worse. The vicious circle can no longer be let go, and people’s only hope is air conditioners and oxygen masks. The country’s administration promises but does nothing.

People get sick. The spirit no longer flows. Pollution fog covers the landscape. Garbage dumps are growing.

The documentary has an apocalyptic vibe and leaves no hope. At the same time, it is in a special way beautiful and more sad than demanding.

Jain makes documentaries on topics the Western world wants to close its eyes to. It is difficult to accept that economic growth is based on the exploitation of both people and nature. In the current world, India’s position is even more controversial, so that’s why it’s worth looking closely at Jain’s pictures.

Invisible Demons is an international co – production, and Finns are also strongly involved in it, among other things Iikka Vehkalahti as a producer and Tuomo Hutri as a graph.

Invisible Demons, Signs of Destruction, Yle Areena and Theme Tue 5.4. at 9.55 p.m. Yle’s dock festival program. (K7)

Read more: When Delhi looked only black-gray smoke from the plane, director Rahul Jain decided to show poisoning in an Indian film that was selected as the first Finnish documentary to Cannes