Holy Cowboys
2022 · 24m · India
Directed by Varun Chopra
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, satire
In small-town India, a teenage boy joins a cow-protection vigilante group believing he is defending a sacred cause, only to find himself drawn deeper into Hindu nationalist extremism. The film uses a hybrid documentary approach to trace how adolescent compassion for sacred cattle gets weaponized into radicalization.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Teenagers radicalized into Hindu-nationalist cow vigilantism, with sacred cattle living in garbage. That central irony is the entire movie and it's a knockout — DOC NYC didn't give it the Grand Jury for nothing.
Chopra observes radicalization with the patience of Rithy Panh — the documentary-hybrid form and the rotting-cow-in-garbage irony promise genuine moral complication rather than tidy denunciation. DOC NYC Grand Jury was correct.
DOC NYC Grand Jury Prize plus IFFR and Clermont-Ferrand — that's serious craft validation for a 24:19 hybrid following teen radicalization in real time. The image of sacred cows living in garbage dumps while their protectors commit violence is the kind of single, unforgettable irony that gives docs their spine.
Reviews
One of the most beautiful and innovatively constructed short films of the year... an urgent picture of a growing evil... represents the best of both documentary and narrative storytelling traditions.
Chopra's lens is firmly focused on the ironies that enable these horrors in the first place, compelling viewers to rethink how compassion and seemingly innocuous values can be channelled and exploited.
Festivals
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2022