Bharatbala Ganapathy documents India's empty streets with 100 drones for 'Uthenge Hum'

When the lockdown in India was imposed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, filmmaker Bharatbala Ganapathy thought about showing people how the world was changing under the lockdown. His documentary titled Uthenge Hum beautifully captured the silence of the country's once busy streets. Over 100 drones were used to portray the silence of the last few months at different locations across the country.

The documentary starts with a lockdown announcement along with a pan-shot from an empty Red Fort in Delhi. After that, the visuals change to several locations whose emptiness will leave you stunned. The initial description of the documentary also indicates that one may never be able to forget the months of 2020.

Empty streets, stations, farmlands, buildings, airports, factories, beaches, shut shops will make you pray that we should never again be able to see India in such a situation. The specifics of the shooting were described as the documentary draws to the end. It said, "For the first time in the history of independent India, a virus forces India into lockdown. From March 25th, a team of 117 filming crew travelled thousands of kilometres across Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Gujarat, Jammu & Kashmir ... The team continues to document India caught in a strange time. India in lockdown."

In a recent interview with a news portal, Bharatbala spoke about his reason to do the documentary. When the lockdown happened, he said that he felt it was his duty as a filmmaker to capture it. He also said that there are many filmmakers in the West devoting time and resources to working on some amazing films for the world to see in the future. This encouraged him to do something like that with Uthenge Hum.

He further went on to say that there are news channels doing the same but it is not creative and sort of emotional engagement. He said that he wanted the sights of an empty India to be captured in a cinematic form. And once normalcy comes back, viewers watching this documentary may simply ask, "Where did all the people go?” Check out a few glimpses of the video below.

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