Abhijnan SARKAR, Chandan BISWAS
Korean Premiere
The film follows the lives of running hawkers on the trains of Bengal. Though they are the overwhelming majority of the working population in India, they exist in the zone between legality and illegality and take a risk to do that work. They insist on their right for dream and hope by working. Their work and life become much more insecure when the field of commodity trade is moving to sites of supermarkets and malls in India.
We follow hawkers running behind the fancy shops in the city. Although they travel on the train every day, their lives are at a standstill. One hawker is infuriated that he hasn¡¯t heard back from the job agency where he registered a long time, and sends letters to the relevant authority to explain his situation. Young boys who are breadwinners of their family can¡¯t afford to think about their own future. There's is a political organization for hawkers but joining it would mean going hungry for days. Not knowing where their lives have come from or how they can put an end to the bondage of life, the poor Indian hawkers use their own bodies as shops and means of transportation in order to make ends meet. From daily necessities, accessories, foods, medicine, books to entertaining performances, they sell just about everything. It appears that the hawkers can bring an entire market to the passengers on the train. However, while that very market is perpetuating the vicious cycle of poverty, the government does little to resolve the problem. [CHAI Heesook]
Abhijnan SARKAR
The Running Hawker (2017)
Chandan BISWAS
The Running Hawker (2017)
Abhijnan SARKAR abhijnan10@gmail.com