Film | Tortoise under the Earth (Dharti Latar Re Horo) – A docu-fiction from Jharkhand

Dharti Latar Re Horo by Shishir Jha (duration 1h 35m) is a story of a tribal couple coping with the loss of their daughter in the Uranium Mining area in the state of Jharkhand, India.

Shishir Jha is known for Dharti Latar Re Horo (2022), Shuruaat Ka Interval (2014) and August (2014).
Source: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6563133/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Reviews

Tortoise Under the Earth: Movie Review By Baradwaj Rangan | Shishir Jha | Jagarnath Baskey | Maugli (4:37)
https://youtu.be/xCUhYGJDWrk

Of people and home by Swarup Kar Purkayastha in Viewfinder (7 December 2024)

“The land is my backbone… I think of land as the history of my nation. It tells me how we came into being and what system we must live. My great ancestors, who live in the times of history, planned everything that we practice now. The law of history says that we must not take land, fight over land, steal land, give land and so on. My land is mine only because I came in spirit from that land, and so did my ancestors of the same land…My land is my foundation.”

The Australian aboriginal land rights campaigner Galarrwuy Yunupingu’s quote finds resonance in the struggles of an Adivasi couple in a village located in an uranium mining area in Jharkhand’s Godda district. The land beneath their feet is threatening to slip away. The villagers have been asked to leave to make space for factories. The couple’s quiet resilience amid loss and longing forms the core of Shishir Jha’s debut feature film Dharti Latar Re Horo (Tortoise Under The Earth). In the manner of a docu-ficition, the filmmaker follows the life of the couple in the Santali film released in 2022. The film explores their history, their relationship with the land, animals and nature in the backdrop of the looming displacement. […]

In the early part of Tortoise Under The Earth, the couple mourns the loss of their daughter. It is not clear what has happened to her. Her absence though is continuously felt. The loss almost symbolically represents their plight of becoming homeless. Their life is fraying at the edges. Whatever is dear to them is slowly slipping away from their grip. They are forever doomed to live the life of a migrant in their own homeland. The wife has a dialogue with the flowers as she nurtures them, “If I stop tending to you, you will die as well.” The scene also brings alive the lines of a poem by Pakistani poet Parveen Shakir:

“He is fragrance and will spread through breeze
The dilemma is with the flower, where will the flower go?”

The couple shares the predicament of the flower. Their daughter is gone, now their home is being taken away. As they contemplate their future, the wife asks, “How can I be at peace with all this turmoil?” But the priorities of the government are different. They want their land for “developmental” work. The villagers leave in a mass exodus. Jagarnath Baskey goes deep into the forest. As his wife looks for him, a girl, presumably the spirit of their daughter, follows her, and then like the fragrance in Shakir’s poem literally melts into the air. […]

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