For a filmmaker with a wacky sense of humour, reflected in his social media posts, Shillong-based Pradip Kurbah’s The Elysian Field (Khasi title Ha Lyngkha Bneng) is a singularly sublime rumination on life through the medium of death and on relationships, most so, a sense of community, by dwelling on individual seclusion. The philosophical core is also richly suffused with a gentle humour.About the last six residents—Ms Helen, Complete, Maia, Friday, Promise and Livingstone—of a remote village in Meghalaya, the film captures their lives through meditative visuals, shot in each of the four seasons. The vast expanse of landscape is evocative of their isolation. Little profundities are strewn all over the dialogue—about how all good things seem to end too soon, how every exit is an entrance to something new, about looking for happiness not in what you have lost but what you still have. The Elysian Field is a film to be experienced and felt than explained.Kurbah’s debut feature Ri: Homeland of Uncertainty (2013), dealt with militancy in Meghalaya; Onataah: Of the Earth (2016) was about a young woman coming to terms with rape and starting life afresh and Market (2019) focused on everyday life of people in Shillong’s bustling Iewduh market. His fourth feature, The Elysian Field, is quite simply the most original and outstanding Indian film I have seen so far in 2025. It had its world premiere at the 47th Moscow International Film Festival where it won three major awards last week—Best Film, Best Director and the NETPAC award for Best Film. Excerpts from a conversation with Kurbah soon after his return from the festival.
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