About Love: Discussion Guide

Three generations of the Phadke family live together in their home in Mumbai. When the youngest daughter turns the camera towards her family, the personal becomes political as power structures within the family become visible, and eventually unravel. Cruel and comic in equal measure, the film shows the vagaries of affection across generations.

In About Love, filmmaker Archana Phadke offers a revealing portrait of the banal, sometimes disturbing, ever enduring bonds of family. Three generations of the Phadke family live together in downtown Mumbai. Their lives, recorded over the span of three years (2015-2017), reveal the contradictions of a modern, well-educated family making a life within India’s traditional Hindu and post-colonial nationalist structures that empower men while marginalizing women.

As the family copes with caring for ailing elders and preparing for a son’s wedding, viewers are invited to think about the purposes of marriage, the impact of losing independence (either through marriage or infirmity), and what it means to be heard.

Faith Rogow, Ph.D., is the co-author of The Teacher’s Guide to Media Literacy: Critical Thinking in a Multimedia World (Corwin, 2012) and past president of the National Association for Media Literacy Education. She has written discussion guides and lesson plans for more than 250 independent films.