Call, Incoming

Six Indian women spend their days training to be truck drivers in Hungary and talking to their loved ones back home. As they cover long distances in both their workplace and personal lives, a story of immigration and female friendship emerges. 

It is very rare to see a woman drive trucks in India and even rarer to see an Indian woman drive trucks in Europe. Bharti, Deepa, Dipali, Gulnaz, Madhu and Rekha spend their days training. When they return tired, the first thing they do is call home. As they continue to fulfil their roles of mother, sister, wife and friend through the phone, the film examines the multitude of roles that the modern immigrant woman fulfils––or is obliged to fulfil––even from thousands of miles away. By using screen recordings one is forced to accommodate the two dimensionality of online relationships and as the film progresses, the form splinters into more screens until finally we return to real life. The film ends in a moment of pure joy, of being able to live life on their own terms away from the judgement of people. Or rather, in defiance of this judgement. Call, Incoming examines the contours of immigration, labour and womanhood with a critical feminist lens, paying tribute to the deep kinship shared by these six female truck drivers in the face of loneliness and alienation