The Holier It Gets

Jennifer Baichwal grew up in Canada with an English mother and an Indian father. For her, there was nothing abnormal about it, but the outside world disagreed. After the wedding, her mother was disinherited and her father had to fight the law for a job. Nevertheless, his Indian background hardly ever played a role in domestic life. So, it came as a great surprise that after his death he wanted to be brought back to India.In the form of a personal diary, Baichwal films the journey to India she made with her husband, brother and two sisters, from their arrival in Bombay to the moment when her father’s ashes are scattered. In the process, what started as an homage to her father turns more and more into a portrait of the travellers. The trip becomes a pilgrimage, which proceeds differently than expected.They are confronted with a country brimming with contradictions. The poverty and rush of Bombay are opposed by the quietude and beauty of the river Ganges. They are faced with the omnipresent Hinduism, which they had never discussed back home. What is more, they discover the naked truth that their father had no other choice than to emigrate: married outside his caste and religion, to a representative of the colonial ruler, he would have been ostracised in India. While trying to take all this in account, the surviving relatives have to decide how and where their father’s final wish can de fulfilled.