Review of Tortoise Under the Earth, directed by Shishir Jha

As of late, I’ve been happy with the amount of Indian cinema that has readily become available across the world. As a United States-based film critic and blogger, representation has always been important to me, and I’ve come to realize how little South Asian representation is available for English speaking, and American, audiences.

While many often peg Indian cinema as just being the Hindi entertainment industry, often known as Bollywood, slowly but surely other narratives and linguistic forms of cinema are emerging and becoming available. One of the greatest aspects of technology for me has been that we can readily access such materials—but sometimes only when they’re offered with translations.

So when I was given the chance to watch and review Tortoise Under the Earth, which is in Santali, a language native to Northeastern India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, I was more than happy to go and watch the movie immediately.

I had personally never consumed content or movies in this language, and I was more than curious. I also wanted to put it out on my blog as the vast number of visitors to my little blog are from both the US and India.

What awaited me in this movie was quite stunning. I don’t want to get too ahead of the review, but this is definitely a movie to keep an eye out for when it’s available in your region. In India, it will be available on MUBI on October 25, 2025—that’s when this post is supposed to go live, so if you have a MUBI subscription, go favorite it now!

Let’s get into the review.

A couple grieves the loss of their daughter as their village goes through immense environmental and political change.

In this film, we don’t immediately meet the protagonists its lens focuses on. But when we do, we learn this couple, who remains unnamed throughout the course of the movie, has faced a recent tragedy. Their daughter passed away, leaving them in grief. As they learn to deal with this, something more sinister is afoot in the broader scheme of things.

Their village and their traditions is actively under threat by recent developments. Specifically the area is being scoped out as being a potential source of uranium. This puts the villagers under the eye of not only government officials, but those who want to profit off of what their sacred land has to offer them. A recipe for disaster, and displacement, is unfolding on the screen before us.

Unfortunately, outside the realm and boundaries of the film’s fictional universe, this is a problem now in Jharkhand. Villagers from the area have become displaced, and negative impacts due to radiation have created a larger public health crisis among those who were from the area to begin with.

But back to the movie: some films (and documentaries) try to offer us a humanized perspective on what’s happening. As we see this couple trying to navigate a world that no longer seems full of joy and color after such a loss, they still manage to have so much love for each other.

I admire films like these for how they remind us the humanity of such terrible situations. Coming from an academic anthropology background myself, blending music, tradition, and the more dramatic elements of the movie proves far more effective in showing how real people could are living like this. In film, we sometimes forget that.

One of the most striking parts of the movie for me is one that we’re introduced to fairly early on: the role of singing as a form of storytelling when in groups. We see this at first with the women and how they sing, and it becomes something we see more of as the movie progresses.

For me, this was a reminder about how humanity passes down stories and lore through the arts and singing, and when those voices are gone and silenced, what else do we have? We lose a lot when these kinds of voices eventually falter and then disappear forever.

At the beginning of the movie, we see so much joy as the villagers sing and dance. As the film continues onward, showing us the uglier side to what’s happening in the village, it becomes a stark juxtaposition to what is shown earlier, making this a harrowing film, but one that is absolutely necessary in a modern world.

It asks this of us: when we celebrate progress, what are we also losing in the progress? Is someone suffering in the name of progress? Or, alternatively: how did we get here?

Overall Thoughts

I really enjoyed this film; it’s a bit slow in its pacing, which is fine for me. Sometimes the camera takes it time in showing us the world surrounding the village, as well as the people living inside it. While politics could easily take up all of the run time, this slower approach is quite effective in the vein of the humanization I mentioned earlier.

One of the more impressive parts of the acting is about how everyone is quite believable, and there are a few memorable lines scattered throughout the film. The use of song, as I mentioned before, is also one of the film’s highlights—it reminded me of the communal nature of this experience, and how music serves as a living memory in itself.

I was not aware of this history before going into the film though, and now I am curious to learn more. Perhaps this is the beginning of a new learning experience! I will be looking up reading materials after this.

Go watch the film though if you’re interested in the synopsis. I would say it is quite a journey, although it can be a difficult one at times. It’s also critical to watch these types of films; while I sit here admiring the song and culture of this community, it is actively being destroyed right in front of the camera, too.

As I mentioned before, it is available on MUBI India as of October 25, 2024.

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