Dedicated to farmers' lives, “Working Man” is an 8-minute short, shot exclusively on a Xiaomi Redmi Note7 Pro, which has won a number of Best Mobile Short awards, including ones from Europe Film Festival U.K., Port Blair, Golden Sparrow and others.
“Working Man” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative
The film begins on an early morning, when a man essentially living in a hut, is woken up by the chickens in his yard. He undresses, washes his face and starts preparing to go to work, tightening a cloth around his head and picking up his sickle. The next images find him in a field, harvesting along with other workers, although each one essentially works on his own. After picking up all the amount he has to, he makes them into rolls, places them on a stick on his back and goes to unload them. As the day is done, he returns home, wipes his sweat and counts his money.
The short follows a documentary-like approach, aiming to show the lives the farmer live as realistically as possible. At the same time, though, the images in the fields are rather impressive, as the yellow/gold colors present a number of sequences of extreme beauty. Furthermore, Aleksandr Shamaliev's music adds a sense of narrative to the production, as both the volume and the pace of the soundtrack picks up as the day of the farmer progresses. This aspect adds much to an otherwise dialogue-less short, but at the same time, makes it look as some kind of commercial on occasion, although not to a level to deem it annoying.
“Working Man” is a testament to the cinematic quality mobile filmmaking can reach, even without particularly expensive equipment, and it would be very interesting to see Bishal Swargiary directing a feature, observational documentary about the lives of Indian farmers.
