After the suicide of her husband, Sanjeevani felt helpless and even contemplated taking her own life. He was one of the estimated 400,000 farmers who have committed suicide since 1995.
Up until 2013, 300,000 farmer suicides were reported. After 2013, available data has been “suppressed or highly manipulated”, director Kinshuk Surjan explains.
In his notes for his CONNEXT project, he further points out how, “India is wearing the scars of chemical farming introduced during the green revolution of the 1960s. This gradually resulted in the elimination of micronutrients from the soil and traditional ways of agriculture. A corporate monopoly over seeds was established, sending generations of farmers spiraling into an abyss of debts.”
But the widows are fighting back. The grief that Sanjeevani suffered was unconscionable, so together with 14 other women, as well as psychologist/activist Dr Potdar, she has vowed to effect change, both from the perspective of wider political mobilisation and the societal attitudes towards the widows as ‘helpless victims.’
“The prices are so low that the investment that they [the farmers] make, they never recover it back,” says Kinshuk. “Most of the times it’s like that. So you take one loan, a second loan, a third loan, and you get into a cycle of debt, and sometimes the loan is at 24% interest, while corporate loans are 5%… The government doesn’t want to speak about it. What the farmers want is a minimum support price. That’s the urgency about it.”
From a personal perspective, Surjan’s grandfather was a farmer who, for years, tended the family’s orange orchards, before realizing it was more cost-effective to allow the fruit to die on the tree rather than invest in the labour needed to harvest it. He was fully aware that this investment would never be repaid in sales to corporate entities.
When, in 2022, the farmers undertook the long march from to Mumbai, in bare feet and at night (hence the film’s title), in order to protest about the conditions, they managed to get an apology from Prime Minister Modi, but the situation has remained the same, Surjan tells BDE.
“When the farmers marched, I was in Brussels, sitting nicely in my comfortable place, but I [saw] there’s an energy developing,” he says, adding how, “I can’t be passive. This topic has been always close to me. I was also looking for how to find hope.”
“The film will be partly [located] in the classroom,” Surjan adds. “Partly to follow Sanjeevani’s personal life as she goes on a tough journey to educate herself, to pay back the debts of her husband and to overcome her fears of speaking in public about depression. She also wants to help other women like her in grief.”
Producer Hanne Phlypo of Clin d’oeil Films explained how 90% of the film has been shot, with a mooted release date of Winter 2023/2024. She is also looking for pre-sales, sales agents, distributors, streamers and broadcasters. “Marching in the Dark sheds light on female emancipation in a highly patriarchal society. These women are not shown as victims or as a problem. They are shown as a solution. And we believe they can be an inspiration for many people…. I believe this film will become a cinematic piece, and I’m convinced that it will move and inspire many women and men around the globe.”
Towards the end of the interview with BDDE, Surjan reflected on the boom in contemporary Indian documentary which has seen global successes with films such as Writing with Fire by 2022 Oscar nominees Sushmit Ghosh & Rintu Thomas, Shaunak Sen’s Sundance-winning All That Breathes (2022) and Rahul Jain’s multi award-winning Invisible Demons (2021).
“I think we first have a very Griersonian tradition,” he comments, citing the great Scottish documentarian John Grierson. “But I think [there is] a new generation of filmmakers who have seen world cinema and do not make distinction between fiction and documentary…and whose first priorities are to tell stories.”
