Hello, my name is Justin the Clueh, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we're talking about Deepa Donraj, a documentary filmmaker from India.

So I wanted to explore Deepa Don Raj because the Criterion Channel has programmed a

selection of her films this month, curated by a critic named Davika Gerrish. And I'd never heard

the name before. When I checked letterboxed, it seemed that her most popular film had been

logged by maybe 40 people, something like that. So I don't know. I figured if the Criterion channel was highlighting the movies, they're probably

very good.

And then that combined with their total obscurity was catnip for me.

Total obscurity going to the point that most of these films that are on Criterion

are not even on IMDB.

I know.

This director does not have a Wikipedia page.

And I think that people will be more and more surprised by that, the more we talk about these

films and how important they are and how effective they are.

So, yeah, they're on the Criterion Channel.

And I also just wanted to explore this filmmaker to explore a different side of Indian cinema.

You know, guys like us, we're familiar with the sort

of poppy, Bollywood stuff. The bombastic, usually one central male hero doing impossible feats and singing

songs. And it's easy for Westerners like us to go see, I don't know, RRR or something by, you know,

one of the big Shah Ruk Khan movies and think, oh, this is very

fun and innocent.

...