Covid-19 Blame Game is an insightful and moving documentary tracking the vicious scapegoating of marginalised people by majoritarian political elites around the world during pandemics past and present. Made by the acclaimed director of Sameer and Birth 1871, Dakxin Chhara, the film starts with a bird's eye view of the scapegoating of various minority groups, which in the 2020 pandemic of Covid-19 included the Roma communities in Romania, the Shia Hazaras in Pakistan, Black minorities in China, and the Chinese minorities in the UK and the USA as well as the homeless populations in the USA.

Following on from the global story, the documentary explores in great depth the sadistic demonisation of Muslim communities, in particular the Tablighi Jamaat, in India as Covid-19 engulfed the country causing fear and confusion. This demonisation was a deliberate ploy to cover the abysmal failure of the populist authoritarian regime to contain the crisis as it focused instead on stoking communal divisions. Covid-19 Blame Game is a timely but stark reminder that such scapegoating of minorities during a crisis can be dangerous. The Great Bubonic Plague was followed by genocide of the German Jewish population and the Great Kantō Earthquake in Japan by the massacre of Korean minorities.

The Covid-19 pandemic and consequent sudden lockdown in India also exposed the worsening state of existing inequalities in the country. The internal migrant labour population, comprising mainly of Dalits, Christians, Muslims and Adivasis, were forced to head homewards on foot due to the thoughtless shut down of public transport by the authorities. Among the thousands walking hundreds of kilometres were women, children and untimely causalities that added a heavy burden to the Covid-19 death count. The documentary exposes how blame games were played to overshadow this humanitarian disaster.

Dakxin Chhara is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, director and socio-cultural activist and recipient of the prestigious Ford Foundation International Fellowship. His biography “Budhan Bolta Hai” won a national award from the Human Rights Commission, Government of India. He has directed over 100 fiction and non-fiction films, including the recent Birth 1871 (2014), Sameer (2017), Sundarana (2017), Broken Gods (2019), Bullet (2019) and The Last Man (2020).

Shatterproof Productions is a British Indie film company that works with internationally well-known and award-winning directors and partners to highlight the human cost of ongoing socio-political issues that are not given the traction they deserve in mainstream media. Our films have relevance for audiences worldwide.

For more details visit www.blame-game.com