An 'Insignificant Man' a documentary on AK sparks significant buzz in Toronto

Directors Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla’s “An Insignificant Man”, a riveting documentary about the people’s movement that culminated in Arvind Kejriwal’s newfangled party wresting a brute majority in the Delhi Assembly in 2015, is making significant global inroads on the back of a mounting buzz.

Following its world premiere at the 41^st Toronto International Film Festival, the 100-minute cinematic account of a key moment in Indian electoral history is slated to travel to festivals in London, Busan, Sao Paolo and Warsaw, besides the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).

For most people, who have seen the film and have taken to social media to articulate their opinions, its appeal lies in the way that it plays out like a political thriller in which the key players confront dramatic ups and downs.

“The film has struck a chord because it captures the energy and complexity of an Indian election,” says debutante Ranka who, with Shukla, also a first-timer, spent a year and a half recording the rallies, meetings and war room pow-wows of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the months leading up to its first electoral battle in 2014.

“The film chronicles a moment in India’s contemporary political history in a manner that no Indian film has ever done,” says Anand Gandhi, producer of “An Insignificant Man”.

He adds, “The idea is to trigger an informed conversation on the alternatives available to those that are fighting the status quo. We were not interested in taking sides or pushing any particular line of political thinking.”

Both Ranka and Shukla, too, assert that “An Insignificant Man” is as neutral as any film can be.

“People of different nationalities who have seen the film here have related at the personal level with something or the other in the film. The issues that the film raises have universal resonance,” says Shukla.