Letters Unwritten to Naiyer Masud

Having identified a number of elements that reappear in the short stories of Naiyer Masud – in particular, the house in which he wrote all his works – a group of enthusiasts of the late author’s writings make a visit to the city of Lucknow in northern India. Having found Masud’s former home – which the writer himself insisted was the only place he could compose his tales – they find their search widening. Soon, the search for locations and symbols mentioned in fiction becomes an exploration of the streets, the character, and the architectural and cultural history of an entire city.

Combining elements of both the documentary and essay film, composed of segments and fragments, and making use of drawings, recordings, photographs, paintings, subtitles, poetry and animated sequences to illustrate the pilgrimage it recounts, the film becomes a sort of delicate constellation whose points of light, gathered together, become a celebration of the sheer joy of discovery. In parallel, Letters Unwritten to Naiyer Masud is a meditation on notions of space, considering as it does the at once related and disparate states of being in a place, from a place and – most significantly – of a place.

– Nicholas Davies