‘A Night of Knowing Nothing’ Review: A Dreamlike Essay on the Poetics of Protest in Modi’s India

variety.com:

Jessica Kiang Bodies sway to a beat we cannot hear. Instead a hushed, disembodied voice (Bhumisuta Das) murmurs over flickering black and white images that look soft to the touch, like a love letter turned velvety with repeated reading.

A film is being projected behind the dancers. Sometimes one of them will strut into the beam and become, for a moment, a part of the screen.

Other times little dramas — embraces or arguments — occur. But mostly there’s just mute, almost ghostly movement, silhouetted and shadowy: Only a few seconds into Payal Kapadia’s shimmery, poetic essay doc “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” it feels like we are a few hours deep into the excavation of someone else’s memories.Kapadia’s film was shot during her time at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), and it is unusually interested in mulling over the role that third-level institutions can play in times of enormous social upheaval.

Among DP/editor Ranabir Das’ beautiful, penumbral images, often dark to the point of abstraction, are casual shots of FTII’s dorms, hallways and outdoor spaces, where student activists gather.