From Lockdown to Laurels : Award-Winning Film on Cycle Mahesh’s 1,700 km Journey Home Screened at MOG Sundays

Goa Khabar : What does it eventually take to reach home, especially when the entire country is in the panicked grip of a pandemic?

For Mahesh Jena, a migrant worker from Odisha, returning home meant undertaking a marathon journey of nearly 1,700 kilometres from Maharashtra after being left jobless and unpaid during the lockdown. Jena’s arduous journey is captured in the docu-fiction film, ‘Cycle Mahesh,’ which was screened at the Museum of Goa in Pilerne as part of its MOG Sundays lecture series.

Directed by Suhel Banerjee, his debut docu-feature is set against the grim backdrop of a global epidemic and confronts audiences with a recent tragic period that impacted millions of lives—a time that now risks being too easily forgotten.

The one hour-long film, shot in a deeply experimental, hybrid form fuses documentary realism with narrative fiction effectively capturing the brave story of Mahesh Jena’s journey briefly cornered national headlines in 2020. But it is Banerjee’s dream-like, poetic treatment that lends power to Mahesh’s homebound odyssey.

“I was struck by the cinematic possibility of it,” Banerjee shares in his director’s note. “Here was a classic Greek hero. But what does cinema owe someone like Mahesh, and what does he expect from it in return?” The film wrestles with these questions, never settling for easy answers. At its core, Cycle Mahesh is about the illusions of home and the unrelenting cycles of poverty and migration in modern India. Banerjee resists sentimental storytelling, allowing the form to fracture and shift—mirroring Mahesh’s physical and emotional exhaustion.

The film’s music directors, Vishesh Kalimero and Rahul Jigyasu, have crafted a score that adapts to the topography Mahesh covered during his cycle ride. Drawing inspiration from nature and the folk traditions of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Odisha—the regions he traversed—the soundtrack incorporates regional instruments like the dotara, layered with the rhythmic whir of Mahesh’s bicycle. “I was mostly watching the landscape,” Kalimero explains. “The music comes from there.”

The film’s trilingual approach, featuring Hindi, Marathi and Oriya, adds authenticity. Yet, for all its cultural specificity, the emotional landscape is universal. “We didn’t focus on the language,” says Kalimero. “We focused on feeling.” In portraying Mahesh, the film does not aim to elevate him as a lone hero. “Mahesh is not just one person—he is a prototype, trapped in circumstances like so many others.”

Now receiving global recognition, Cycle Mahesh has been officially selected for New Directors/New Films 2025 by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Film at Lincoln Center, New York. It invites audiences not only to witness, but also to question. The film calls attention to the ethics of storytelling, the limits of representation, and the responsibilities of those behind the camera. Cycle Mahesh also won the Best First Feature award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2024.