This is going to sound like prejudice - and maybe it is - but I never called a documentary a masterpiece. Until today.
Payal Kapadia takes a concept seemingly so simple - a few lost letters for a lost love - to give us one of the most necessary, radical, and artistically superior documents I've ever seen.
If All We Imagine as Light is my favorite film of 2024, then A Night of Knowing Nothing is my favorite documentary ever. Several times I cried, several times I had to take a deep breath and exhale forcefully, several times I felt my heartbeat quicken.
It is revolting, it is sad, it is terrifying (so terrifying that I often found myself wondering what Kapadia could do with a horror film). There is also a bit of hope. Kapadia has an activist and radical side that resembles some student political movements from past decades. I must confess that I have lost that optimism. Right now, I truly believe that hatred has won, and when hatred triumphs over hope, there is no reason to be optimistic. I keep fighting, yes, but I feel that the time to build a different, fairer, more peaceful, more equal world is behind us. We had that opportunity in history, and we squandered it.
Technically, what is achieved in terms of sound, image, and how everything is articulated so dynamically, so beautifully, and so hauntingly is absolutely brilliant. Bhumisuta Das's narration is also impeccable, perfect, making us feel everything behind those words.
I don't have much more to say. This film should be more than mandatory in any arts and politics course around the world. Incredible.
