My Barefoot Friend: IDFA Movie Review

Jan 7, 2011
Cecily Layzell

IDFA Documentary My Barefoot Friend - Image IDFA 2010

Seong-Gyou Lee explores the role of the film maker in his own story, in compelling IDFA documentary 'My Barefoot Friend' about rickshaw drivers in Calcutta.

“Stop filming, stop filming, I’ve had enough," implores 55-year-old rickshaw driver Shallim in the opening frames of IDFA documentary My Barefoot Friend. South Korean director Seong-Gyou Lee goes to comfort Shallim, the shoeless (and largely toothless) friend in the movie's title, but the camera keeps rolling. The scene makes it into the final cut and returns at the end of the movie.

Lee’s relationship with Shallim and his involvement in the story he is telling is the starting point for this absorbing glimpse into the lives of rickshaw drivers in Calcutta.

A Rickshaw Driver and His Dream

Originally from the province of Bihar, Shallim is one of 10,000 rickshaw drivers in the vibrant Indian city of Calcutta, and has been transporting people, groceries and livestock barefoot - "shoes slip" - through the streets for 35 years.

It is a grueling, poorly paid occupation, and the threat of a new law banning rickshaws altogether also hangs over Shallim’s head. This would jeopardize his dream of saving enough money to buy a motorized rickshaw, which would bring in more money to support his family. But when his wife falls ill and the medical bills start to build up, he sees his dream evaporating almost as quickly as his savings.

‘My Barefoot Friend' Shot on Digital Camera

My Barefoot Friend, or to give it its cumbersome full title My Barefoot Friend: The Story of Shallim and His Old Rickshaw, was going to be called simply Old Rickshaw. However, the intimacy of the men's relationship, which had grown over the course of a decade, prompted Seong-Gyou Lee to edit a different documentary from the one he had originally envisaged.

The entire production was filmed on a digital camera, the perfect tool to allow Seong-Gyou Lee to get up close - sometimes uncomfortably so - to his protagonist. Ultimately, Lee is only on screen in the opening and closing scenes, and so his role in the story becomes something of a sub-theme.

Lee’s absence does not impoverish My Barefoot Friend, which successfully captures the color and speed of overcrowded Calcutta. Also portrayed is the camaraderie between Shallim and his fellow rickshaw drivers, in particular 75-year-old Hussein and Manoj, a 20-year-old also from Bihar, who struggles to adapt to city life.

Exhilarating Ride through Calcutta’s Streets

Seong-Gyou Lee has an eye for detail, and the documentary is sprinkled with close-ups of a resting hand, the callused sole of a foot, or the turning wheels of Shallim’s rickshaw shot at street level. Lee falters when, in search of drama, he inserts flashbacks and reconstructions of events that took place 10 years previously in Bihar. These do not add anything to the documentary and ultimately feel forced.

Thankfully, these moments are few and far between and one is ultimately left with a feeling of exhilaration as Seong-Gyou Lee takes you on a breakneck, sometimes bumpy ride through Calcutta’s busy streets, literally in Shallim’s footsteps.

Director Seong-Gyou Lee

Seong-Gyou Lee was born in Chuncheon, South Korea in 1963. He studied social welfare, before moving into script writing in 1990. He directed and produced his first documentary shortly afterwards. His main area of interest is migrant workers from Nepal and India.

Prior to My Barefoot Friend, he produced Children of God (2009), an audience favorite about homeless children who survive by scavenging on the banks of Nepal's Bagmati River. The documentary screened at several film festivals, including Canadian film festival Hotdocs, and won a number of awards.

Like Lee's previous offering, My Barefoot Friend, which was selected for the 2010 IDFA Competition for Feature-length Documentary, is sure to be a crowd pleaser as it continues on to other film festivals.