Bedabrata Pain

Jhunku, a 14-year-old youth in 1930s British Bangladesh, embarks on a journey to determine where he belongs.

Against the backdrop of the global rise in farmers’ movement, comes the documentary “Déjà vu”. The documentary began in 2021 -- barely two months after the launch of the farm laws in India to promote market reforms in agriculture. In the middle of Covid and a frigid American winter, four Indians went on a ten-thousand-kilometer drive through the farming heartland of America. Because, as it turns out that four decades ago, similar market reforms were ushered in in America. A more classic case of “back to the future” perhaps could not be found. How did the reforms turn out? Who benefitted? Who lost out? Is it the farmers, the consumers, or the corporates? What impact did loss of MSP (or parity as it is called in America) or ushering in of contract farming have on farmers? Déjà Vu is the confluence where past meets future.

Deja Vu (2025) is a documentary by Indian filmmaker Bedabrata Pain that draws parallels between the corporatization of the American farming industry in the 1980s and similar agricultural market reforms in India