FESTIVALS: * Millenium International Documentary Film Festival (Bruxelles, Belgium) * Hot Docs (Toronto, Canada) * IDFA (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) * Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (Greece) * One World International Film Festival (Czech Republic) * Belfast Film Festival (Northern Ireland.) * MakeDox (Skopje, Macedonia) * Millenium International Documentary Film Festival (Bruxelles, Belgium) * Haifa International Film Festival (Israel) * Flahertiana IDFF (Perm, Russia) * Salem Film Fest (USA) * Cinema Nova (Brugge, Belgium) * Brave Festival Film (Wroclaw, Poland) * Ramdam Festival (Tournai, Belgium) * Docs Against Gravity Film Festival (Poland) * Sofia International Film Festival (Bulgaria) * FOKAL - Fondation Connaissance et libertés (Haïti) | My Barefoot Friend
In Calcutta, 20 thousand feet are running tangled up, all barefoot. They are rickshaw pullers, slowly disappearing out of the city’s landscape. Among them are Manoj, a feeble young man, Mohamad, a lovely trickster who more often fail than succeed, and Husain the street sage who knows all about the city. And Shallim, an ordinary man, a husband of a wife, a father of a son. For Shallim, an old and tired rickshaw has been the only means of hope. He’s run endless miles with it to save up money to buy an auto rickshaw, that will realize his dream: A house for his family. However, despair comes to the weakest first. Shallim’s wife is found to be seriously ill. His son catches a swine flu while working at a factory. Hospital charges are mounting and Shallim’s dream is on the verge of collapsing. Feeling dejected, he shed tears–the tears of fathers.While the shadow of despair cast on Shalim, the trauma of Manoj about his father’s death is revealed. Is there any hope left for barefoot Calcutta? Korean director Seong-Gyou Lee has built his documentary career on films about Nepali and Indian migrant workers. He has known Shallim and his colleagues for ten years, having shot extensively in their Calcutta world and the poverty-ridden state of Bihar, where most of them come from. PRESS IMAGES: (click to preview) 
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