‘Village Rockstars 2’ movie review: Rima Das returns with a psalm of resistance

If the 2017 original was a euphoric, barefoot sprint through childhood fantasies, this luminous sequel is a melancholic exhale of coming of age.

Published - September 25, 2026 08:17 pm IST

Bhanita Das in ‘Village Rockstars 2’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

In contemporary Indian cinema, few voices capture the anguish and alchemy of rural survival quite like Rima Das. With Village Rockstars 2, the auteur returns to the flood-bitten plains of Assam, proving that lightning can indeed strike twice in the same muddy field.

If the 2017 original was a euphoric, barefoot sprint through childhood fantasies, this luminous sequel is a melancholic exhale of coming of age. The cardboard guitars have given way to real strings. Her Apu’s melody is now weighted down by the weight of adulthood, but Dhunu isn’t the tragic sister left behind to fade away.

Dhunu, played with natural grace by Bhanita Das, is 17 now and finds herself negotiating a rising Brahmaputra, a flailing mother, a brother losing himself to alcohol, and a piranha called development lurking in still waters. The gossip, the shared giggles, and the teenage heartbreaks are beautiful, but they are fleeting. Her instrument has a broken string, and Dhunu knows how to fix it.

It seems the simple act of holding onto a dream requires a quiet revolution. Early in the film, when the teacher demands that the students analyse the floods before they can state their life goals, the blackboard prompt echoes life in rural Assam. It tells the audience that survival is a prerequisite to dreaming.

A still from ‘Village Rockstars 2’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

As a multi-hyphenate filmmaker who writes, directs, shoots, edits, and produces her work, Rima’s singular voice remains unfiltered. Even less of a traditional storyline than the first, the sequel works more like an impressionistic montage where visual poetry meets an observational documentary-fiction aesthetic. A dragonfly catching attention, Dhunu caressing a real snake, or a confidential teenage conversation creates an immersive, slow-cinema rhythm with multiple layers. Rima uses naturalistic camerawork to freeze small moments. She opens scenes with frames that look like pristine postcards of rural Assam.

But gradually the illusion of sunbathed fields, towering green canopies, and a vast, peaceful sky melts away, exposing a crushing reality. As we marvel at the pastoral innocence and friendship captured in gold-hour light, the camera tilts down slightly, and we realise the girls are standing calf-deep in water. The ubiquitous leech becomes a visceral metaphor, linking the land’s physical challenges to Dhunu’s emotional and economic struggles. The rainbow warns of an impending catastrophic flood.

Rima sprinkles quiet, ordinary moments throughout the film that organically expose rigid social, gender, and economic hierarchies. Early in the film, the brother’s constant cribbing about Dhunu wearing his shorts verbalises his insecurity in a jovial fashion, and gradually, as he becomes addicted to alcohol, it becomes a sign of who is in charge.

Even though Dhunu does the heavy lifting and steers the family through crisis, the external capitalist structure refuses to recognise her or her mother’s identity. When the land broker manipulates her brother to sell the misplaced idea of development, it functions as a powerful commentary on how patriarchy and predatory capitalism operate hand-in-hand.

While the village elders police Dhunu’s teenage body and her brother buckles under pressure, the mother (Basanti Das) remains a steadfast ally. She never scolds Dhunu for wearing her brother’s shorts, wading through mud, or choosing a guitar over domestic chores. Through their tender relationship (Basanti and Bhanita are mother and daughter in real life as well), Rima maps the survival codes of women in a society that puts them on a pedestal but mocks them when they do a man’s job. No wonder Dhunu is not enjoying growing up in a world in which development is an extractive, violent process that feeds on rural vulnerability and destroys the world that she grew up in. The bulldozers aren’t just digging up dirt; they are excavating the village’s identity. The film establishes a seamless link between the mother’s physical body and the changing Assamese landscape. We often look to urban migration as the only escape from the climate crisis, but Dhunu and other mothers stand firm. Their refusal to run represents a rooted resistance. By the end, Dhunu no longer climbs the tree; she embraces it.