Maya

French war reporter Gabriel (Roman Kolinka) has just returned from captivity in Syria to his hometown of Paris. Nevertheless, he is unable to arrive: the traumas of the past months, which he has denied, are too great, the events that he documented for the world and which he can no longer get out of his head now, in his early 30s. Gabriel pulls up stakes and travels to India, more precisely to Goa - the place of his childhood, where a godfather and his estranged mother still live. He finds solace in the warm-hearted, much younger Maya (Aarshi Banerjee). A relationship is on the horizon. But his lofty goals of taking responsibility and no longer looking the other way, which Gabriel usually brings to the world as a war reporter, cannot be realized on a small scale with Maya. Mia Hansen-Løve ("Eden", "Bergman Island") shot "Maya" with a very small team at times. She contrasts panoramas of Indian cities passing by with gestures that run into the void, making her multi-layered film appear large and small at the same time. Religious fundamentalism, globalization, gentrification, family ties - many themes are touched upon in "Maya", but not necessarily all of them are formulated. Rather, the story provides food for thought and reveals a similar state of uncertainty and excessive demands as Gabriel experiences. In the background, the dilemma of a liberal, Western bourgeoisie emerges, which proclaims political and interpersonal responsibility for itself, but can no longer find convincing answers for its own actions. "Cinematographer Hélène Louvart finds stunningly coarse-grained images, shots that refuse to provide information or answers to previous actions. If "Maya" is to be ascribed a thematic constant, it is most likely that of another facet of Hansen-Løve's cinema of bourgeois-bohemian insecurities. A cinema whose narrative center revolves around the emotional sensitivities of a liberal bourgeoisie that secretly knows very well that it is not master in its own house. None of these domestic worlds is more real, none more right than the other." (Daniel Moersener, at: filmdienst.de)