march around the world 2026 | 19/30 | 🇮🇳 India

Based on a short story by Mukul Sharma, the father of director Konkona Sen Sharma, A Death in the Gunj starts at the end with exactly what the title promises. It's just after New Years, 1979. There's a body in the trunk of a little blue car, one taillight broken. We stay in 1979 for a few minutes, then hop back a week.

It's 1978 now and the little blue car's taillights are both working, its trunk corpse-free. An Anglo-Indian family (the film is largely in English) in eastern India is on holiday. Mild-mannered 23-year old Shutu, the youngest in the family other than his 8-year-old niece, has been having a Bad Time™. His life hasn't been going the way he hoped, his father recently passed, and now he's on holiday with family members who don't really seem to care about him much.

We've read the title. We know what happens. But this story is less about that and more about why, and I think it did a good job of that. I also liked the cast's performances here, especially Vikrant Massey (Shutu) and Gulshan Devaiah (Nandu).

2026 asian cinema challenge | 1/52 | Week 22 - Indian Women Directors (I'll be doing the weeks very much out of order)