Making its premiere at the Berlinale festival 2025, Bengali drama Shadowbox was marketed as a seemingly tense thriller – a story of a woman who must uncover the truth of her missing husband with PTSD. However, the reality is a very different film. A gentle, slow-burn, drama that reckons with Indian society's attitude towards mental health struggles, anchored by a trio of truthful and grounded central performances.

Directors Tanushree Das and Saumyanada Sahi's present a simple narrative with their debut Shadowbox. The film follows Maya (Tillotama Shome), an educated woman who has become estranged from her family due to her working as a housemaid, and running a launderette service, and staying by her husband Sundar (Chandan Bisht) – whom the whole town have deemed ‘crazy'. Sundar's mental state is far more complicated than that; a returned veteran, the man now struggles with severe anxiety, alcoholism, and a complete unwillingness to get a job, preferring to spend his days catching frogs to sell to academics. Their son Debu (Sayan Karmakar) is an ordinary teenager who just wants to spend his time dancing and hanging out with his friends, but a public awareness of his father's unusual tendencies make it hard for him to be truly seen. The first half of the film spends a lot of time on the establishing of these characters, helping us to understand who they are and their frustrations. The second half of the film takes a turn when Sundar's drinking buddy is found dead, and as the primary suspect, Sundar has made himself scarce. Maya must deal with the police, as well as her family's judgement, as she reckons with the reality of the situation.

Given that the film has a runtime of only 93 minutes (by Indian standards this may as well be a short), it manages to drag its way through that runtime, truly fulfilling the term ‘slow-burn'. While the pacing does frustrate, it does also allow for time to truly deepen the characterisation of the main trio. Shome stuns as Maya, her restrained performance depicting a woman just trying to make it through each day, her frustrations as evident as her deep love for her family, and the brevity of joy she feels when she sees them thrive. The hints at her previous stature and education and how she has seemingly fallen in society don't quite manage to analyse Indian class structure, but they do add a level of pride to her character that Shome plays on just the right level. Bisht is equally brilliant, playing a mentally-ill man with great tenderness in a society that does not understand these struggles – a lack of understanding that the film centres on. Das and Sahi clearly want to challenge societal norms and widely held beliefs in Indian culture, but Shadowbox does not have the time or the mechanisms to do this in a way that drives the conversation forward. It does however, have complete empathy for its lead characters, and by humanising them as they have, it already presents itself as a fresh and poignant addition in the contemporary Indian film canon.

Shadowbox screened at Berlinale International Film Festival 2025