Birds In The Dark Review | Shashank Walia’s Resistance Epic Is A Visually Alluring, Powerful Plea

Resistance is often more formidable when it cuts across lines. When different marginalised groups gauge a shared line of oppression, while acknowledging particular differences, they can slice through the foundations that constrain them, erase them. Shashank Walia’s debut feature, Birds In The Dark, is shot through with longing, ache and a political refusal. Exquisitely pared-back, it’s a gentle, imperative appeal for sea change, a rupture in structures tearing us apart. Its commitment to artistic beauty is as vital as political gusto.

Celebrating its India premiere at the Dharamshala Film Festival 2026 after winning Busan’s Songwon Vision Audience Award, Birds In The Dark (Hanere De Panchi) is saturated with melancholic phantom-like dimensions. Walia, well-regarded for his cinematographic work, proves his hand in the opening stretches themselves circling two men: a police informer, Jagtar (Harwinder Singh Aujla) and the Kashmiri Muslim he’s taken captive, Amir (Shahnawaz Bhat). Vividly atmospheric compositions gesture to dramatic volatility. As the men move through forests, sleep on the riverbanks, fish, the hard-edged identity in this equation melts to welcome something more intimate and tease romantic possibility. The jungle is primed as a space outside the bind of identity. The freedom to be allows a new relationship to bloom, affinities breaking away from the coercive.

Amir has his doubts if Jagtar has even the power to do what he has done. He has no idea what his crime is. The Indian State assigns automatic guilt and aspersion to minorities, anyone outside the dominant strand of identity, Hindu right-wing opinion. Kashmiri Muslims are seen as the ultimate enemy of the State, denied every basic dignity. Amir wonders if he’d ever return to Kashmir or he’ll languish in jail in Delhi or Punjab. The journey the men are on bring them closer. The film never lapses into a slew of dialogues. Rather, it quietly, sensitively traces a spark that slashes through orchestrated hate and divide.

Rippling over seasons, the film heads into the fire and utterly captivating dynamism of Dilraj (Mauli Singh), Jagtar’s childhood friend. His homecoming folds into her track as she guides Dalit landless labourers to seize what is rightfully theirs. Between the scythes and the work, there are fleeting moments for catching a breath. Dilraj’s hum rings out across the wind-flecked crop. It’s in such still moments the film feels staggeringly realised. The film carries a sober weight that drenches every frame. Histories, endured and resisted, splay into the images. The backdrop has witnessed a lot of violence, land grabs, sexual violence levied against women that got away scot-free licensed by power prerogatives. There’s the churning possibility of change, a sigh of regret that’s reshaped into something more hopeful and affirming. Jagtar returns home, broken and dwarfed in his crippled self-worth. He’d left in the quest of improving his social standing, restore dignity to his family stripped of their land. Neither had he told his wealthier upper-caste landowner lover, Raman (Navdeep Bajwa). His return is as abrupt as his departure. He had hopes that it might be the only way to legitimise his desires.

But life didn’t take the trajectory he sought. Caught amid frustration, disappointment and thwarted impulses, Jagtar is cast adrift. Now, Amir too lands in the village, looking for Jagtar. Aujla brings such heart-ripping, haunting fragility we almost wish to reach out and reassure him. The actor is terrific in honing this kind of wounded, piercing softness, reflected as well in Gurvinder Singh’s Locarno-vying stunner, Rehmat. Walia served as DP on that film.

Walia is wary enough not to harp on submission and defeat. Instead, the flame of resilience and dogged hope burns brightly. Singh’s Dilraj leads the mobilisation. She refuses to give up the fight even as allies fall away. Dilraj walked out of a marriage that kept eroding her. There must have been ignominy upon her return. Her own drunkard brother still shames her over the dowry that her marriage cost. He slams her walkout not as defiance but resignation. In a scene where she’s lugging him home, every exertion to wheel the cart along seems to heave with her contained, bristling fury and the brunt of indignities that have grown routine. Dilraj doesn’t swallow every calumny so much as she channels it into fuelling her drive for radical social change. Singh’s presence burnishes the screen with a force that accommodates both fatigue and undimmable purpose. When Jagtar tells her she never seemed like someone who’d ever cede to oppression, she purely asks why she would.

Birds In The Dark unravels with subdued, simmering intensity. Voices swell in unison in latter stretches. This tapestry of rebellion finds strength in solidarity. There’s persistence and resolve in communities that march shoulder to shoulder. Walia hails a spirit of resistance, unforgettably steered by Singh. Shot entirely in black and white, the film switches from houses with papering walls to vast expanses of fields. Walia approaches what freedom means across caste and sexual lines. Each empowers the other, walking together. Amir nudges Dilraj along as she canvasses her community to embrace collective farming. The yield could then be shared instead of it remaining at the behest of upper-caste fiefs.

The motley threads don’t always fuse into a compelling whole. There are moments when the film appears too diffuse and sedate for its own good. Its rushed jumps chafe instead of melding from one point to the next, Conversations among its vectors occasionally veer to alienating opacity. It’s tonally muted, eager to bask in the vistas of Punjab’s fields, everyday scenes. The lingering quality draws us in and also distances. But any film is more intriguing when it swirls in contradictions. Give me one over those that emerge with steady, settled patterns. Birds In The Dark mines the varied acts of intimacy to such political ends we can’t help but be rapt. At one point, Dilraj simply asks, “What are without togetherness?” The humble beam of her political clarity captures the film right up to its rousing call of a climax. Heed her call.