“Katiyabaaz” takes an objective look at an enormous problem, and transforms the mundane, all-too-familiar reality of India’s power crisis into a gripping tale of Indian ingenuity and battle for survival. Watch it if stark reality on celluloid does not leave you feeling bored, short-changed or overwhelmed.

Katiyabaaz is a beautifully-shot documentary that tells Kanpur’s story with great sensitivity and wit. The years spent on the project have allowed the directors to film some fantastic sequences, like the violence that erupts on the streets one night when a large part of the city loses electricity. Small-town India at its electric, despairing best…

Shot like a feature by filmmakers Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar, Katiyabaaz is a fine documentary. However, there are moments in which the film’s cinematic quality works against it.

Kanpur’s power crisis in a film that awkwardly straddles fiction and documentary. It is heartening to see documentaries release on the big screen, and Katiyabaaz is the clever new avatar of this genre that turns the mundane and the extraordinary in reality into marketable and watchable cinema.

The good, bad and ugly side of power politics in Kanpur that reflects the dark underbelly of shining India.

This human interest documentary chronicling the power play about power is a real live wire