Fire in the Mountains

TicketsJune 15-19 – In northern India, a breathtakingly beautiful Himalayan community attracts tourists by co-mingling South Asian and Swiss Alps aesthetics. Debut filmmaker Ajitpal Singh tells an unconventional story of feminist strength while “accentuating the [region’s] spectacular exteriors and wide-canvas nature shots” (Variety).

A mother toils to save money to build a road in her village, to more easily take her wheelchair-bound son to physiotherapy, all the while competing with her neighbors for business, battling the strictures of patriarchy, a local infrastructure from hell, an unsupportive family, and religious superstitions.

She saves money, uses feminine wiles to subvert the corrupt powers-that-be, and continually piggy-backs her son up and down the mountainside to medical appointments with condescending doctors. In the end, our heroine’s tightly wound grit must find release… in triumph, madness, or both. (Ajitpal Singh, 2021, India, 1:24, NR)