Descent Into Chaos

When two worlds clash, there is usually mayhem onscreen in India. The director Dibakar Banerjee is a master of this genre, from LSD to Shanghai. Kabir Tejpal’s Stolen is an honourable addition to this genre, where the best of urban intentions meets the worst of rural aggression. A stolen baby and her desperate mother is all it takes for every mask of law and civility to fall off. Tejpal shows the many encounters with an acute sense of observation: two brothers are in town to attend their mother’s second marriage, eliciting smirks from the police officers; a young Bengali woman is on the run, seeking help from the law as much as she is fleeing from it; a brother who thinks money is the answer for everything finds himself stripped of everything except his newly discovered humanity; and a wizened, corrupt police officer can’t look an honest, poor woman in the eye. Brothers in courage, mothers under siege, entire communities wrapped up in pain, expressed only through senseless violence; and a healthcare system that breeds venality. Stolen borrows from our jagged times, but is relayed back to us with pain and poignancy. It is a film that leaves you shat­tered and yet with enough hope in the innate spirit of human beings.

Abhishek BanerjeeentertainmentKabir TejpalMia MaelzerPrime Videostolenstreaming business