Saturday, April 11 at 9:00pm | $8 | Oregon Premiere!
Part road movie, part spectacle, part human drama, MONSOON is a documentary exploration of a monsoon, the vast seasonal weather system that unifies the immense and varied culture of India, shaping the conditions of existence for its billion-plus inhabitants. Filmed across the Indian subcontinent and charting the system’s path as it gradually engulfs every region of the country, MONSOON introduces us to an array of individuals whose lives are in different ways entwined with the phenomenon. There are the meteorologists, who seek to contain it within an explanatory net of scientific analysis and rational forecast; the neighborhood bookie who takes bets on the arrival of the rains; the farmers and fishermen, who contend with the system’s godlike, life-and-death caprices; the citizens of Mumbai, where the monsoon’s arrival is felt from the slums to the stock market to the Bollywood film industry; the nature conservationists, who worry about the impact on the country’s endangered species; and the ordinary Indian family, for whom the annual deluge is part of a rhythmic cycle, at once unfathomably cruel and joyously affirming. A cinematic journey into the terrain where nature, science, belief, and wonder converge in one of the most breathtaking landscapes on earth, MONSOON captures the timelessness and rich human drama of our engagement with the natural world.