Follower

Raghu is a small-time journalist working at a radical online media outlet in the linguistically polarised town of Belgaum in Southern India. He doesn’t mind the meagre pay, for he is committed to his cause, posting inflammatory, dubious content attacking his opponents. Objective news reports plant seeds of doubt, but he responds to this cognitive dissonance by redoubling his fanatical outpourings on the internet, with tragic consequences.

With a razor-sharp sense of place and culture, Harshad Nalawade’s astute, compassionate drama Follower makes us intimate with the diverse sources of Raghu’s radicalisation, relatively minor hassles in themselves, but all accumulating into a general feeling of being stuck in life. Every time Raghu sticks his head out, he is pulled back to be shown his place. Follower is a rare work that taps into the frustration of having to feel like an outsider in one’s own home. Yet the film refuses to reduce Raghu to these harsh experiences alone, giving him a nuanced, finely textured social life in the form of two close companions – upper-class YouTuber Sachin and a Muslim single mother, Parveen. Theirs is a relationship not exhausted by their identities but still susceptible to crack under external pressure. In their beautiful friendship, Follower reminds us of what is at risk of being lost.

– Srikanth Srinivasan