10/10
Platform Magazine, Article
6 March 2010
The quiet shades of exile in a short film about an Algerian refugee, a real yet surreal coming-of-age feature film in the border town of Tijuana in Mexico and now a documentary film about the orphaned children who have found a home in the Majestic railway station of Bangalore.

Dylan Verrechia born to a Danish mother and a French-Italian father in Paris, was aroused by the pangs of storytelling and found himself studying film-making in New York. Dylan's filmography is as multicultural as his lineage and each film honestly explores the multifaceted aspects of identity, situation and context. This new-age independent filmmaker explores life and individual lives through his art and has created a very moving, real and honest piece of cinema with "Kids of the Majestic".

The hustle and bustle of a railway station anywhere in India cannot go by unnoticed, the gamut of faces and voices become overpowering sounds and figures, falling into place as part of the scenery that we more often than not just pass by. And in the daily routine of schedules, arrivals and delays, is a community of orphans and runaway children collecting trash that passengers have left behind. Dr. Suhas Radhakrishna and Dylan befriended a bunch of these kids in Bangalore and began documenting their lives. Rafik, a smiling young drug addict; Mental Manja, nicknamed "mental" because he didn't speak until he was ten; Arun-Badur, the artist and the writer; Baba, who at eight has travelled throughout India alone; and Joti, mother-to-be at sixteen, who was abused at nine - become the focus of this film.

A feature length documentary that according to Dylan, "is simply for people to learn about the children who live in the shadows of society. It is to tell the story of the pains that caused them to run away from home and the ramshackle communities and families that they created on their own. It is about their hopes and their struggles. There is no overt moral message in the film, but we hope that it motivates people and opens their minds."
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