Raghu Rai: An Unframed Portrait (2017)

Raghu Rai is the father of Indian photography. His story is told by young Avani Rai, who has to fight for her own voice in the shadow of her father. For over fifty years, Raghu Rai has witnessed the transformation of India. An Unframed Portrait builds a historical narrative through Raghu Rai's photographs through time, as he tells some of his unique experiences that not only affected him deeply, but as important landmarks in the young yet crucial history of India. Raghu Rai has not only covered the life of the very ordinary Indians in cities and villages, during their sorrow and joy, but also the Bangladesh war and its liberation, the fall of the Soviet Union, turbulences in Kashmir, state of emergency 1975 under Indira Gandhi's reign - where his team was put in jail for not censoring their work, and also the death of Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa, death of Pakistan's president Zia Ul Haq, Mother Teresa being awarded the bharat ratna, and many other historical events. Raghu Rai's photos on Bhopal had tremendous importance to the whole world, and portraits on Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa are iconic. An Unframed Portrait is structurally built around three important journeys Raghu Rai makes with his daughter Avani, the filmmaker, and on their constantly evolving relationship. For the daughter, Raghu Rai is a man who knows it all and has done it all, while Avani is still trying to make sense of many things in life. One of them being the profession of her own father, with a heavy name and responsibility, a so-called legacy, to carry forward.