Mumbai Blues

Mumbai is the largest city in India, the fastest growing city in the world and one in which it is easiest to – fall into ruins. The film begins with grotesque frames of members of the local Laughing Club, who gather every morning at five o’clock in a Mumbai park. There they laugh their guts our, thus starting their daily confrontation with the challenges of the big city.

The film then portrays the ethnic community of Parsis that once ruled the city, but are today nearly extinct; the traditional washerwomen who are no longer needed since the introduction of washing machines; prostitutes whose trade is failing due to AIDS; transvestites, discarded from society … and the lost big-screen hopes of people who have spent as many as ten years roaming the streets of Mumbai in search of cinema fame.

Mumbai Blues is an episode of the documentary series Silent Voices.