After film talk at the Kassel premiere of "Flying Tigers" at Dokfest Kassel

When her demented mother mentions strange things about tigers invading houses, it prompts filmmaker Madhusree Dutta to embark on a journey to Assam, India. There, she learns about the "Flying Tigers": US aircraft that transported military supplies from Assam across the Himalayas to Kunming, China, during World War II. Dutta's partly fictional documentary essay travels halfway around the world and through several decades, telling stories of human experience and gigantic logistics—small stories in the shadow of grand history. Together with Kunming-born media theorist Mi You and Assam-based researcher Purav Goswami, she contrasts today's silently circulating flows of goods with the increasing restrictions on human freedom of movement. Her film describes the inherently fluid reality of populations living near borders, which is not as homogeneous as political cartography suggests. Fittingly, Dutta chooses a heterogeneous form that bursts genre boundaries: interviews, archival material, reenactments, animation, and musical interludes come together to create a deeply personal work that spans a wide arc—simultaneously intimate and colossal.