Special Sneak Preview: Doormat

 

Doormat is the recent winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature Documentary at HBO’s South Asian Film Festival at New York City’s Rubin Museum of Art, juried by such luminaries as Waris Ahluwalia of The Darjeeling Limited,  Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and Maulik Pancholy of 30 Rock. 

 

Doormat is co-directed by Susan Armstrong, a motion graphics designer who’s done award-winning graphics on feature films and videos for Sigur Ros, David Bowie, Sheryl Crow and Tricky, and Christy Garland, an award winning filmmaker with films that have been broadcast the world over.

 

With humour and an eccentric approach to oddly meaningful details, Doormat uses lyrical animation to chart the journey of an ordinary household doormat to launch into the stories of four individuals who grapple with the question of how to live a meaningful life. 

 

A doormat factory owner wonders whether the frantic race to become #1 is slipping his life away; a production manager yearns to write poetry and escape the drudgery of his menial job; a coconut tree climber mourns the estrangement from a family that has disowned him because of his lowly status, and a single mom makes endless sacrifices to give her son the chance she never had.  Not your average documentary about India, Doormat explores the metaphysical question of whether the direction of our lives can be shaped by free will, or we are simply the pawns of fate.