Kali Yuga Chants
Directed by Nilima Abrams
Vermont | 2018 | Documentary | 91 min
Filmmaker in attendance
Kali Yuga Chants follows “Uncle” and “Aunty,” a mixed-race couple living in India, and the 35 children they’re raising in a makeshift foster family. The film chronicles the kids’ transformation from begging in the streets and picking through garbage to learning meditation and math, karate and cooking. Individual kids are followed over ten years as they gain confidence, overcome anger and sadness, and navigate teenage hormones. The kids become expert chanters of Hinduism’s ancient Vedic mantras, which, ironically, help them to break free from the caste and gender stigma of their births but still brings backlash from the established elite. As the whole group struggles to build a permanent home, external and internal complications threaten to tear apart the family, raising questions that are central to the human condition.
