Nine years after his breakout debut, Thithi (2015), Raam Reddy returns to MAMI with a labour of love that couldn’t be more different. Set in the late 1980s, The Fable drops us into the sleepy estate of Teen Pahad, a piece of paradise tucked away in the mighty Himalayas. The lord of this picturesque demesne is Dev (Manoj Bajpayee), a reticent family man who spends his free time building mechanical wings that allow him to take flight over the valley. The seemingly eternal social order of the estate is threatened when, one day, trees in the orchard mysteriously begin to catch fire. Dev’s efforts to investigate the arson wrench him out of his cocooned, colonial existence, increasingly confronting him with truths about himself and his family that defy reason. Shot on 16 mm in nuanced, earthen tones, the film transports the viewer with its rapturous textures and sounds into a world in which fact and fantasy fuse together in a seamless, matter-of-fact manner. A magic realist work uniting the earth, fire, and sky, Raam Reddy’s long-awaited second feature is a monument of perseverance and passion.

- Srikanth Srinivasan