The Cinema Travellers

For seven decades, villages across India have gathered to await the wonder of the traveling cinemas, and the magic of the movies that they bring. In the Cannes prize-winning documentary The Cinema Travellers, directors Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya journey across India with traveling cinemas. As lorries deteriorate, projectors crumble, and film becomes scarce, the times see audiences being lured further and further away by the juggernaut of digital technology. Filmed over five years, The Cinema Travellers accompanies a shrewd exhibitor, a benevolent showman, and a maverick projector mechanic as they bear their increasingly pressing, but beautiful burden-keeping the last of India's traveling cinemas alive.