The Scavenger of Dreams (Suman Ghosh) India |

The Scavenger of Dreams
Suman Ghosh
India. 2023. 85 min

The story of a family of waste collectors in Calcutta who collects waste from one of the richest localities of the city. They sift through the wastes and bring objects for their 6 year old daughter to tell bed time stories at night. That is their connection with the richest strata of the society. Their life is left asunder when a new battery operated car is made mandatory for their collections.

SUMAN GHOSH

Suman Ghosh is a National Award winning Indian filmmaker. He has made 7 feature films and one documentary film. His first feature film Footsteps (2007), won 2 Indian National Awards. It was shown at numerous film festivals including Vancouver, Karlovy Vary and IAAC New York. His next feature film Nobel Thief (2011), was world premiered at the Busan IFF and was an official selection at the BFI, London Film festival. The film received the “Best Indian Film” award at the Bengaluru International Film Festival in 2012. His next feature film Shyamal Uncle Turns off the Lights (2012) was world premiered at BIFF 2012 and had its North American Premiere at the MoMA, NY. It won the “Outstanding International Feature Award” at the ReelWorld Film festival in Toronto. Peace Haven (2014), his next film, was a recipient of the Asian Cinema Fund and was World premiered at BIFF 2014. It made into a number of prominent film festivals and was acquired by Netflix. In 2019 he made his first Hindi film called Aadhaar (2019) which is produced by Drishyam Films and Jio Studios.

DIRECTOR,S NOTE

India is a land of immense variety. People live in extreme poverty as well as it is the land of some of the richest billionaires in the world. When I lived in Kolkata I used to think about the lives of the garbage collectors. The fact that they collect ‘garbage’ from neighborhoods of different strata interested me a lot. Interestingly, knowing the lives of people through their garbage is a fascinating thought. Often I used to imagine myself as one of those garbage collectors and from the objects that I collect I would try to build stories as to what goes inside those homes. And more so, what is ‘trash’ for some might be ‘treasure’ for others. Hence I thought of telling a story as to how the lives of the extreme rich coalesce with that of the extreme poor and the strange connection that they have amongst each other as a result – through garbage. I also wanted to focus how modernization has left an entire community of workers in peril.

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