All That Breathes director Shaunak Sen's next tells the story of his own cancer battle: ‘A way to displace the terror’
Here's the latest update from the Bollywood world:
Indian filmmaker Shaunak Sen is turning his lens inwards for his new documentary after the Oscar-nominated All That Breathes. In a recent interview, the filmmaker shared that his next movie began as a "coping" mechanism after a shock cancer diagnosis, but continues the motifs of environmental degradation and caregiving from his previous work.
Adding to this, Indian filmmaker Shaunak Sen reading notes from a diary at his residence in New Delhi. (Photo by Arun SANKAR / AFP) (AFP) Shaunak Sen on dealing with ‘terror’ In an interview with AFP, the 39-year-old filmmaker opened up about his soon-to-release untitled documentary. “It became a kind of coping strategy, or a way to deal or dissociate or displace the terror of what you've just been told,” he shared, adding that his diagnosis brought home "the same risks" that make hundreds of birds fall every year from New Delhi's throat-burning polluted skies -- this time on “my own body”.
Meanwhile, Shaunak's All That Breathes follows two brothers running a largely self-funded clinic for birds falling victim to Delhi's polluted air. It won top documentary prizes at Sundance and Cannes in 2022 and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2023 Oscars .
Notably, “Whenever you ask most oncologists why this happened, or why this current giant spike in cancer rates is occurring, a lot of them would talk about environmental factors like toxins or chemicals or the air,” he added.
As per the latest buzz, Shaunak says the protagonist in his new movie is not him, but his doctor. “I did not want to make something that was solipsistically inwards folding. What I loved in a surgeon was the ability to completely lose yourself, to be immersed in the absolute present. That feels meditative and contemplative. It's a kind of melting away of everything extraneous, and you're in the pinprick of the moment,” he added.
In further updates, The movie is also about Sen's relationship with New Delhi, where he grew up, went to school and university, and where all his work is set. The filmmaker called the city a ‘wallpaper’ for the movie.
On top of that, In January 2025, the filmmaker opened up about his cancer diagnosis on social media. Shaunak posted on Instagram to talk about the health scare. He also shared several pictures of the hospital. One showed him in a hospital bed, and others featured his friends who visited him in the hospital, including director Mira Nair and Tillotama Shome.
“Bit of an absurd update. October end, during a checkup for an autoimmune thing, I got a shock diagnosis: a routine scan revealed a small malignant tumour in the kidney. Utter bolt from the blue. No kidney-related symptoms, no hereditary history, no big history of drinking/smoking. Urgent surgery was advised,” Shaunak wrote in the note.
Source: Hindustan Times