Jatin Kampani Finds Quiet Heroism in the Everyday Through His Latest Short Film

It’s shocking to imagine Mumbai stripped of its honking horns, rattling local trains, the shuffle of millions of hurried feet, the cries of street hawkers, and the occasional hymns of commuters. And yet, in his latest short film, The Stars of a Quiet Struggle, celebrated photographer Jatin Kampani shows the city in a quieter, often overlooked kind of glory.

Shot mostly in black and white on a Fujifilm, Kampani’s The Stars of a Quiet Struggle turns the ordinary into something cinematic. A man sits in a photo shop, playing the flute next to a photocopy machine.

Mumbai’s dabbawalas pedal past, their lunchboxes clanging. An old woman begs on the street, of bikes stood in the mid-da heat, and some images are intentionally blurry, capturing the city’s fast pace, the imperfection, texture, and the raw grammar of the streets.

Then, just when you’ve settled into the quiet poetry of the monochrome streets, Kampani flips the switch. Color floods in like a kaleidoscope, bringing a vivid, almost dizzying vibrancy to the frame through a contrasting conceptual fashion photography jarring, in the best way like finally seeing the world after squinting through a keyhole.

The short film is a deeply human photo story that captures the resilience and beauty of everyday life. Created in association with Fujifilm, the series reflects Kampani’s signature ability to merge worlds — blending the sophistication of fashion photography, the emotional intensity of cinema, and the authenticity of street storytelling.

Jatin Kampani

According to the lawyer turned self-taught shutterbug who has always wanted to tell a superhero story, "these are the real heroes — people who strive, survive, and shine quietly, without recognition. To me, they are the stars of a quiet struggle.”

Through the project shot on Fujifilm RF100, Kampani deliberately steps away from the world of glitz to focus on a different kind of star: the unseen individuals who power the city with their everyday courage only to reinterprets these moments in studio setups that borrow from fashion photography, creating a dialogue between grit and grace.

The first Indian photographer to ever feature on the cover of Lürzer’s Archive and be among their 200 Best Ad Photographers Worldwide, for Kampani this body of work "marries two (of his) creative worlds. It’s where the language of the street meets the language of fashion — emotional, cinematic, and honest.”

Kampani’s Mumbai is stripped of the scripted glamour and finds it in the hands of the dabbawalas, the people on the streets and the unspoken quietness of those moving through the city, unnoticed yet unbowed.