‘I’m interested in urgent cinema’: Director Ben Rekhi on his latest documentary, ‘The Reunited States’

Going beyond the polarisation in US politics, director Ben Rekhi aims to bridge the divide among parties and get people talking about issues like race in his latest documentary, The Reunited States

Ben Rekhi is no stranger to navigating the murky world of politics and human suffering. His début feature, Waterborne (2005) starring Shabana Azmi, revolved around a terrorist attack; the 2018 documentary The Hidden Vote looked at minority communities who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and his 2019 crime thriller Watch List (Maria) tells the story of a woman whose husband is killed in an extrajudicial killing under President Rodrigo Duterte’s watch in the Philippines. In his latest documentary The Reunited States, Rekhi, 42, profiles four individuals who are grappling with the growing political chasm in the United States — Susan Bro, whose daughter was killed when a car ploughed through a rally in Charlottesville in 2017; Greg Orman, an independent politician who wants to provide a viable alternative to the two-party system; Steven Olikara, a political commentator working to build a coalition of bi-partisan lawmakers; and David and Erin Leaverton, two Republicans who travel across the US to understand what is driving Americans apart. I ask him what draws him to politics, a topic many filmmakers seem to veer away from. “It’s never overtly about politics... I call it urgent cinema,” Rekhi says over a phone call from the US. “There are a lot of crises in our world and cinema is a very powerful tool to help us understand and navigate it. I ask myself ‘where are the stories of people in conflict, or under oppression?’ and a lot of times that comes from politics and policy,” he says, adding that there is hope for independents with electoral reform. “We live in a world where it’s black or white in politics, but the world is grey. There is a lot of momentum now to change the way we vote. We need more political parties so that it’s not just this duopoly where the two of the most powerful keep everyone else out.”