I think if I had to pinpoint a moment of what led me to meeting the brothers, I was stuck in a traffic jam and looking up at the lazy dots in the sky that are the Black Kites. So, essentially what happened is that I wanted to do something about the triangulation of people, birds, and air. And you’re very conscious of breathing in noxious fumes, and the sky is like this gray monochromatic expanse with tiny dots-Black Kites. It’s like you’re surrounded by this kind of gray lamina that’s constantly coating your life. Sen: When you live in a city like Delhi, the air sort of has a heavy, opaque, omnipresent quality.

Audubon spoke with Sen about the film and its subjects’ extraordinary dedication to their avian neighbors.Īudubon: How did you first meet the brothers? Most directly, though, All That Breathes-the first film to win best documentary at both the Sundance and Cannes festivals-is about the brothers’ refusal to ignore the suffering of the abundant but vulnerable Black Kites. It’s also concerned with environmental degradation in a city where the air is so polluted that breathing it caused an estimated 54,000 premature deaths in 2020 and where its “sheer opacity,” per the movie’s website, “ensures that bigger birds, especially raptors, regularly collide into buildings or get entangled in wires.” And looming behind Sen’s lyrical shots of this urban environment is a wave of horrific sectarian violence against Muslims like the film’s heroes. Now a new documentary film, All That Breathes, is garnering significant acclaim for its study of the brothers, the Black Kites they rescue (with help from their endearing mentee Salik Rehman), and the complex interconnections between humans and animals in one of the world’s most populous cities.Īs its title suggests, Shaunak Sen’s film, now in theaters and streaming next year on HBO Max, is about much more than Black Kites, a species that thrives in Delhi largely by scavenging trash.

Back in 2017, an Audubon magazine story introduced readers to Mohammed Saud and Nadeem Shahzad, brothers in Delhi, India, who have dedicated their lives to rehabilitating wounded raptors.

Styrofoam kite birds