Fly Away

In this buoyant musical comedy, an obstinate schoolboy and his loving but cash-strapped dad undertake a road trip away from the anxieties of the city. And through the string of kind-hearted individuals they meet, they learn what truly ails their quietly desperate lives back home.

Unpredictability is one of Tamil filmmaker Ram’s trademarks. After the civilisation-shunning metaphysical drama Resurrection (IFFR 2018) and the millennia-hopping romantic fantasy Seven Seas Seven Hills (IFFR 2024), the filmmaker now throws another curveball with Fly Away, a winsome musical comedy firmly planted in the here and now.

Gokul’s financial reach far exceeds his reality, but juggling unpayable loans and dodging debt collectors, he tries his best to provide for his pampered son, Anbu. With his mother away on business, Anbu persuades his father to go on a motorcycle trip through the countryside – a welcome break from everyday hustle, that helps Gokul realise that his son’s tantrums have a far deeper root than may at first seem.

Beneath their differences on the surface, Ram’s films display a remarkable continuity in worldview and thematic concerns. In Fly Away, globalisation and the alienation from nature, whose perils his early work warned about, have seeped into every aspect of family life. But Ram handles these hefty philosophical ideas with a pleasing lightness of touch, the narrative advancing through slangy songs. Suffused with grace and goodwill, Fly Away invites viewers on a joyride through childhood, friendship, parenting and romance.

– Srikanth Srinivasan