I.D.

Identity – what defines a person? Businesswoman Charu lives with her female friend in a modern high-rise apartment in Mumbai. When she returns home one day to find a worker unconscious in her flat, Charu embarks on a search for his identity and ends up caught in a maelstrom of unexpected events. Using the only tool she has – his mobile phone – Charu becomes acquainted with Indian bureaucracy and, above all, with a city she never knew existed. Charu’s search for this unknown man takes her to the slums on the outskirts of this mega metropolis, where she is soon left searching for herself. The magnificent handheld camera work in the hyper-real setting of Mumbai’s slums gives an occasional documentary feel to I.D., and makes the extreme social differences strikingly apparent in this urban Indian tale. (Zurich Film Festival)