CycleMahesh

When a lockdown is announced in India, 22-year-old Mahesh finds himself stranded and decides to travel home on a rickety bicycle. He covers about 2,000 kilometers in seven days. It turns him into a national media hype.

Politicians promise better living conditions, neighbors joke about sending him to the Olympic Games, a filmmaker from Mumbai decides to make a film about him. But nothing comes of any of it, and before long he is just a poor plumber again.

In a blend of fiction and non-fiction that leans on the work of Abbas Kiarostami—in more impressionist scenes the young worker is played by an actor—CycleMahesh paints a picture of the lack of choices Mahesh faces in life, just like millions of other workers in India. Meanwhile, this is a film about filmmaking, constantly reminding the audience that Mahesh himself has a hand in the production.