‘In an often hermetic world of film festivals it has become increasingly fashionable over the past couple of decades to confuse a certain kind of cinematic minimalism and formal austerity for a sign of a serious, thoughtful, engaged talent at work. While this trend is perfectly harmless when it comes to fiction, it becomes very problematic when we are confronted with documentary images of ongoing human struggles that take place in exoticized nameless environments, with nameless and voiceless human beings reduced to suffering flesh. The perpetrator is always the same: detached gaze of a Western filmmaker, fascinated by the otherness of the places he can afford to visit. In such cultural climate, Nishtha Jain's latest documentary The Golden Thread is somewhat of a miracle. It starts with a loaded image of workers entering the factory: an homage to the cinematographic image itself, an homage to the primal ability of the cinematographic image to show, to monstrate. It continues as a purely visual experience, a symphony of images inhabited by tired men and ancient machines that would make Dziga Vertov proud. But then, and while retaining its visual vibrancy, it progresses into something else: into an intimate record of time spent with the workers. Careful observation evolves into a respectful conversation: each face carries a secret wish, each blister has a history. Golden Thread is an ethic and aesthetic blueprint for a labor documentary of the future.”

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- Jurij Meden

Film Critic and curator at Vienna Cinematheque