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Shades of Reflection
A Film Review Collection
Our hearts are filled with gratitude for the overwhelming response 'Kayo Kayo Colour?' has received from audiences worldwide, all thanks to the incredible reviews from esteemed film critics across the globe. With their thoughtful words, the critics breathed life into our visual language, unlocking dimensions of meaning we had yet to articulate ourselves. Their unwavering support means everything to us, inspiring us to keep pushing the boundaries of filmmaking.
Film Reviews by Film Critics
International Film Festival Rotterdam
19 December 2022 | Srikanth Srinivasan
Chavada's self-aware, theatrical framing blends fiction and reality, as does the use of non-professional actors in long, intimate shots. With transfixing passages of dead time and non-narrative digressions, he creates space for his characters to breathe freely, to just be. Quietly inheriting the powers of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1978), Which Colour? presents an India that we have never seen before.
BFI Sight and Sound
8 February 2023 | Srikanth Srinivasan
A radical departure for Indian cinema
The debut feature from Shahrukhkhan Chavada opens new avenues for Indian cinema, focusing on a financially precarious working-class Muslim family in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, through a purely humanist lens... with an eye comparable to Hirokazu Koreeda
Film Companion
28 February 2023 | Aswathy Gopalakrishnan
A Fiercely Humanist Film That Resonates with the History of Ahmedabad
In a world that seeks to erase every sign of your existence, there must be nothing more daring or sensational than just living, and nothing more resilient than firmly marking your presence.
Cineticle
21 March 2023 | Maksim Karpitski
A successful sequel to Bicycle Thieves
Chavada achieves what seemed impossible. "Which Colour?" does not avoid politics at all, because conscious "apoliticality" is the same as defeatism, dressing up in the clothes of aestheticism and affirming the superiority of the dominant ideology.
Maktoob Media
11 July 2023 | Afeef Ahmed
A brilliant depiction of the everyday mundane
It also shows us the possibilities of new forms of life, asking us to move away from the heavy moral tropes of representation that restrict us to the binary tropes of reaction/resistance by being either villain/victim.
NDTV - MAMI 2023: Top Ten Discoveries At The Festival
11 November 2023 | Saibal Chatterjee
A sensitive and illuminating depiction of the Muslim ghetto of Kalupur in Ahmedabad.
Capturing the general in the particular, the minimalist Kayo Kayo Colour? offers nuances that are often lost in conventional cinematic excess.
Film Companion - Hotlist
22 March 2023 | Prathyush Parasuraman
Exquisite, serrated, gorgeous visual prose that uses visual aberrations and improvised serendipity.
It is not a documentary, but a document of the vapours, vagaries, and voltas of everyday Muslim life in Kalupur, Ahmedabad. But neither is it a document in the neat sense of a world that unfolds at a remove from you, that you as a viewer get to peek into without any sense of voyeurism or shame.
OTT Play (Hindustan Times)
23 February 2023 | Aditya Shrikrishna
A Muslim Family In Gujarat Is Framed In Black & White
With this fringe-of- the-action framing and non-professionals, Chavada’s film has a Bressonian influence as well as the realist approach of a Kiarostami in his capture of everyday familial life in Kalupur.
Vague Visages
17 April 2023 | Dipankar Sarkar
With Kayo Kayo Colour?, Chavada touches upon the focal core of human values and relationships.
The vagaries of life are unrecognizably blended with the characters' quest for survival, and there is nothing more daring and durable than firmly marking their presence in a world that attempts to obliterate every trace of their existence.
Cut, and Print!
8 December 2023 | Prakhar Patidar
While the form makes you think, the content invites you in.
We never leave the area, the story never leaves its focus, and the frame never falters... Chavada's refreshing composition of frames, equally nuanced understanding of his characters' socio-political context and its impact on everyday life restores your faith in the film before any doubt takes root.
Moneycontrol
19 February 2024 | Tanushree Ghosh
Rare and Essential
Chavada’s debut drama, in all its black-and-white glory, is a visual masterpiece, a terrific cinematic experience, which embraces the flaws to show life as it is. In his cinema of yore, he holds our hand and takes us inside a Muslim home to meet these characters and see for ourselves how they live.
Bolly & Co., France
21 April 2024 | Asmae Benmansour-Ammour
This minimalist approach invites us to focus on the essential, on what the characters say, on what they experience and not on the way in which they could be presented. Shahrukhkhan Chavada and Wafa Refai indeed deliver a humanist film which, although immersive, remains deeply respectful of its characters. In short, what is certain is that you will not see a film like this again anytime soon.
Five Flavours Asian Film Festival
7 September 2023 | Łukasz Mańkowski
Through this simple, everyday record, Shahrukhkhan Chavada manifests his protest against the systemic erasure. He creates a very particular aesthetics of the every day, capturing the Indian "culture of waiting" through static shots and loops of repeating rituals.
High on Films
28 July 2023 | Niikhiil Akhiil
Reminds us of the film “The White Balloon” by Jafar Panahi
Within a country’s planetary lies a family with a platter of wonders awaiting to resonate within our senses... Chavada opens the portal of segregating the coats of adulthood and adolescence under one roof through the Razzak family in this film.
Five Flavours Film Festival (AMP)
8 September 2023 | Panos Kotzathanasis
A family chronicle that grips with its bravery
Rendered through rhythmical observations, Chavada’s method offers a unique commentary on the current situation of the Muslim minority in India that stands as a poignant and valid representation of those who are utterly marginalized by the system.
Bolly & Co., France
20 April 2024 | Vanessa Bianchi
In France, very often, the population does not know Indian cinema or India well. A film is above all a film, an artistic creation, nevertheless, it is undeniable that it is also part of a context, a world, a society. In the case of Kayo Kayo Color?, a first film, contextualization is particularly necessary because most spectators are not necessarily informed about the history of Gujarat. Shahrukhkhan and Wafa's Interview.
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