Film Review: Still Standing (2022) - Hong Kong / Italy / UK
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
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The Sindhi Story, a Ghost That Refuses to Fade - There is a particular kind of sadness that comes from looking at a map and realizing the country you were born in no longer exists. For the Sindhi people, that map isn't just outdated; it's torn in half, soaked in blood, and scattered across the globe. Mirko Pincelli’s "Still Standing" (2022) is about the people who survived that tearing.
This is not a history lesson, though it contains history. It is not a travelogue, though it spans the globe from the banks of the Indus to the high-rises of Hong Kong. It is a tone poem about memory, a character-driven documentary that asks what happens to a culture when you take away its zip code.
Pincelli, a photographer by trade, has an eye for the kind of image that haunts you. The film is filled with spectacular and evocative visuals that feel less like documentary footage and more like paintings come to life. He understands that memory is sensory. You don’t just remember Partition; you remember the dust, the light on the water, the texture of the fabric your grandmother wore. By focusing on the ancient roots of the Indus Valley Civilization and juxtaposing them with the modern, polished lives of Sindhis in Dubai or London, Pincelli creates a dialogue between then and now. The soundtrack washes over you, a melancholic tide that makes the whole odyssey feel deeply, achingly personal.
The film’s strength is its neutrality. It isn't interested in pointing fingers at the politicians who drew the lines in 1947. It is interested in resilience. We meet real people, not talking heads with bullet-point talking points. We see them celebrate, pray, and build businesses. We watch them carry a civilization in their suitcases.
If the film stumbles, it is only in its ambition. The scope is vast—following the diaspora from Pakistan to India to the Middle East to Europe—and occasionally, you wish Pincelli would sit down with one family for an extra hour, letting the camera just watch them breathe. The emotional stakes are high, but a tighter focus on one personal arc could have made them feel even higher.
But that is a minor quibble. "Still Standing" is a life lesson disguised as a movie. It is a testament to the idea that home is not always a place on a map; sometimes, home is a language, a recipe, a song passed down through generations. For anyone who has ever felt displaced, or for anyone who wants to understand how a people can lose everything and still, impossibly, remain standing, this film is highly recommended.
It earns its place, quietly and firmly, in the canon of essential post-colonial stories. (Neo, 2026)