There’s a particular kind of independent film from India that has permeated the festival circuit in the last few years. They hint at the recent political turmoil, the social inequities and taboos of an increasingly rigid society. The sound design is decidedly sober, the camera is mostly still, the characters speak soft and slow. The titles are usually long English phrases or sentences (more frequently in the aftermath of Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light). It’s a hard trick to pull because a ‘meditative’ film can easily tip over into a ‘self-conscious’ one. Shashank Walia’s Birds in the Dark (Punjabi title: Hanere de Panchhi), which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, lands somewhere in the middle of its fine intention and self-serious form.Shot entirely in black-and-white by Walia (he also shot Gurvinder Singh’s Rehmat), the film begins with a voice informing someone that they’ve caught hold of a person. The man Jagtar (Harinder Singh Aujla) is shown stylishly smoking a cigarette next to Amir (Shahnawaz Bhat), his captive, who is asleep. They’re deep in a forest (presumably in Uttarakhand) when we first meet them. Amir’s subjugation is written on his face, his Urdu-inflected manner of speaking and his name. However, that doesn’t stop him from staying below the radar. When one man in a safari jeep (giving them a lift) tries to hunt an animal, Amir shoves him at the last minute. Till the very end, we’re not told why Amir was being pursued by cops. “Does it even matter?” – I remember thinking out loud at my screen, given the climate in India in 2026.A screengrab from Birds in the Dark (Punjabi title: Hanere de Panchhi).After setting Amir free under unclear circumstances, Jagtar returns to his village in Punjab. It’s a stark reversal of the state we’re used to witnessing in the mainstream. It’s not lush fields, palatial homes and SUVs. The roof in the courtyard of Jagtar’s home is about to collapse. His family is ridden with debt. What’s worse is Raman (Navdeep Bajwa), Jagtar’s paramour, among the more prosperous families in the village, is prone to drunken promises in the height of passion. The social ‘hierarchy’ is deep-seated in the village, where a Dalit man dancing in an upper-caste man’s celebration is seen as a provocation. It’s one of the best scenes in Walia’s film that feels meditative and riveting, where a man avenges his humiliation by dancing with abandon, even as everyone is taken aback by the ‘audacity’ of it. The tension builds, is momentarily broken, and then the man is pulled out of the frame and beaten within an inch of his life. My favourite track in the film features the Dalit man’s sister, Dilraj (Mauli Singh) and Rinku (Sapna Das) – two women labourers, working in the fields of ‘upper’-caste farmers. Dilraj, who walked out of an abusive marriage (a brave decision in this context), has both the weariness of someone tired of fighting her circumstances and fierceness to see the injustice around her. Rinku, on the other hand, has the innocence and the mischief of a younger sibling.A screengrab from Birds in the Dark (Punjabi title: Hanere de Panchhi).Weaving a dry, dusty, suffocating hamlet in Punjab, the world building and the soundscape in Walia’s film is immaculate. However, there are a few narrative turns which seemed to be lacking a connective tissue, to make them plausible. For instance, Amir coming back to Jagtar’s village, and the film insinuating they fell in love during their brief journey together. Then, Rinku is implied to have been raped by Raman’s younger brother. The scene abruptly cuts to Rinku on a boat with her family, where she attempts to kill herself. I’m all for narrative economy, but there’s no hint on Rinku’s face about the implied assault she faced: a bruise, or a gash. In a bid to be subliminal, the film makes the traumatic event less visceral for its audience. I also found the manner in which Amir speaks, with pronounced wisdom, slightly stilted. Especially around characters speaking in earthy Punjabi. Somewhere towards the end of the film, it’s also hinted that Amir and Raman are briefly attracted to each other – which felt abrupt to me.I think the 142-minute film finds its purpose in the last 30 mins, when Dilraj announces her intent to organise a protest to assert the rights of Dalit farmers and workers. It’s preceded by the film’s best scene, when Dilraj reaches out to a traumatised Rinku before she sets off on the path of revolution. Das is terrific as Rinku, as she quietly and gracefully lets Dilraj down, choosing herself (and her unborn child) over social justice of the many. Singh’s stoic face here, has the texture of a seasoned actor having weathered many ups and downs, even though this is only her second film (after Adh Chanani Raat).Birds in the Dark has the ingredients of a strong film, however I also found myself wishing it to be less uptight about its good intentions. The result is a technically proficient film with a good handle on its atmospherics, but ones with one too many narrative ellipses. For all its political urgency, Walia’s film, too often, mistakes solemnity for substance.*Birds in the Dark (‘Hanere de Panchhi’) premiered at the 31st Busan International Film Festival on October 10.