anthems

In anthems, the artist impressionistically guides us through contemporary feelings of political regression. As we watch a young man walk past a cargo bay on the outskirts of nowhere, we hear “azaadi” (freedom) chanted from his headphones. In what happens next, Leena Patoli raises questions to indict our contemporary times, in which freedom’s closure is evident in many ways. She asks, why does one person’s freedom not guarantee another’s? How does limiting another’s freedom hamper our own? If the world depicted is indeed our shared world, who are we in the film—the individual walking, a child, a teacher, or an onlooker? How are we complicit, one way or another, in freedom’s distress?