>> Catalog 2025

CycleMahesh

Cycleमहेश

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INDIA / 2024 / Odia, Marathi, Hindi / Color / DCP / 61 min

Director, Script, Editing: Suhel Banerjee
Script: Gurleen Judge
Photography: Prateek Pamecha
Music: Vishesh Kalimero, Rahul Jigyasu
Sound Design, Sound Mixing: Bigyna Dahal
Creative Producer: Gurleen Judge
Producer: Teesta Setalvad
Source: Suhel Banerjee

During the COVID-19 lockdown, young labourer Mahesh cycled nearly two thousand kilometers over seven days to return home from his place of migrant work. The journey was picked up by the news, and his briefly famous bicycle trip became the subject of a film. Moving between fiction and nonfiction, the film’s journey overlaps with the lives of those driven from their homes and turned into internally displaced people, before circling back to Mahesh’s own deadlocked life, from which he cannot escape. A multilayered and outlandish road movie that depicts the reality of contemporary India through uninhibited imagery and an unusual sense of humour. (NRY)

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[Director’s Statement] When I first read about Mahesh Jena’s extraordinary journey—cycling two thousand kilometres during the COVID lockdown with almost no money or maps—I was struck by its cinematic potential. Here was a young migrant worker who had become a minor celebrity, yet returned to his life of hardship soon after, earning $3 a day on a distant construction site. His courage was mythic, but the fame had changed nothing.

I contacted him, and he remembered the journey fondly—those desperate days had also made him feel free. He was eager about the film, drawn not by money, but the glamour of cinema. But I wasn’t sure how to honour his story. Interviews felt insufficient, fictionalisation felt exploitative. And what of his expectations?

Around that time, I traveled to Palghar—a tribal region between Mumbai and Gujarat—where I met Mamta Pared, a young indigenous woman. Her stories revealed the dreams and desperation of the youth who leave home seeking better lives. I knew these truths couldn’t be ignored either.

I also began to question my own gaze. I had faced none of the hardship Mahesh or Mamta had. What could I reveal that people didn’t already know—or chose not to see?

Inspired by Iranian filmmakers like Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf, I crafted a film that blends fiction and nonfiction, mythology and documentary. It does not offer easy emotions or redemptive arcs. It challenges form and asks the audience to truly look.

This has been a difficult film to make. But at its heart lies the ordinary Indian—whose daily struggle is lit by the glow of myth, memory, and resilience. I hope the film reflects that, even if only in part.