Top 20 Audience Favourite
Rising sea levels, warming waters and fluctuating rainfall patterns are straining coastal communities worldwide. In Sarvnik Kaur’s masterful award-winning portrait, we meet two best friends on the front line of these unceasing changes. Rakesh and Ganesh are from the Indigenous Koli community in the Mumbai region of India. Threatened by climate change and a scarcity of fish due to chronic overfishing, the friends employ different methods of harvesting the sea. Rakesh is committed to Koli traditions of following tidal and lunar patterns and only fishing in shallow waters, but what he catches is tangled in plastic and worth little money. Ganesh, who is married to the daughter of a rich Koli, embraces technology and hunts tuna in the deep sea using a motorized boat and satellites. Tension arises in the friendship when Ganesh entertains the idea of using LED lights, a highly invasive approach. Through carefully composed scenes the richness and fragility of the relationship is captured, mimicking that of the natural world around the two friends. Selina Crammond