Combining cutting commentary about the crooked mores in rural India and a wildly absurd narrative that David Lynch would readily approve, Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap’s suitably titled Kok Kok Kokoook is best described as “social surrealism” in action.

Revolving around a much-despised poultry vendor’s descent into neurosis and a grotesque metamorphosis, the director has delivered what could easily be the most singular and scintillating title at the Busan International Film Festival this year. That is quite an achievement in itself, given the modestly budgeted film’s humble beginnings as the young cineaste’s dissertation film at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute.

Running to just over an hour, Kok Kok Kokoook is proof of Kashyap’s potential as a concise storyteller and precise editor of his own wildly imaginative ideas – not to mention his ability to conjure raw visual splendour with the very minimal resources at his disposal. It’s a short, sharp shock to the system, and Busan might have missed a beat by not including it in the lineup of its inaugural top-ranked competition.

Like Kamal Swaroop’s similarly gibberish-titled 1988 cult film Om-Dar-B-Dar, the manic Kok Kok Kokoook pecks at social norms and stylistic conventions in more ways than one. Unlike Swaroop, whose film was left largely forgotten for nearly two decades before its renaissance, Kashyap shouldn’t have to wait that long before his career takes off.

In an astonishingly uninhibited and unhinged performance, Raju Roy plays Siken, a man who earns a living by selling chicken on a dusty, dirty junction in a small, chaotic down in the northeastern Indian state of Assam. Living alone in a rackety hut on a hilltop, the non-local Siken is bullied and reviled by nearly everyone: his name is actually a bastardised take on the word “chicken”, with some of the townsfolk simply calling him “Muslim” or “migrant”. The only person who wouldn’t call him any of that is Abebe (Esther Jama Paulino Kenyi), a Sudanese woman who somehow finds herself stranded in northeastern India after a botched flight for better lands.

Filmed mostly by DP Shingkhanu Marma in close-up with wide-angled lens, Siken appears perennially fraught with anxiety and fear, something neither his pet chicken nor the loving Abebe couldn’t really alleviate. His only solace lies in his red motorcycle, which he cleans – with soap, and in the river – with extreme affection and sensuality. However, he also has to rent it out to earn some extra cash – and it’s here that his problems begin, when a trio of bumbling, crooked cops arrive at the neighborhood to search for a biker (or the bike) involved in a deadly hit-and-run.

Fenced in by the manhunt and growing increasingly despondent of having to lose his beloved bike, Siken’s inner torment is turned outwards in a striking physical transformation made very, very real through the production design of Jyoti Sankar Bhattacharya and Harendranath Kalita, and also Reeya Phukan’s visceral couture. Arnab Borah’s jolting sound design resembles a slow-moving crescendo of white noise, dialling the horror slowly and gradually throughout the film until it reaches its stunning, literally jangling denouement.

Beyond all the doom and gloom, however, Kok Kok Kokoook is essentially a story about an individual’s pain-stricken journey towards spiritual transcendence. Bookended by an animated opening sequence about the kinship of dinosaurs and chickens and a poetic final shot that brims with optimism, the film is much more thoughtful and philosophical than its absurd moments might suggest. Kok Kok Kokoook crows loudly, but its message remains true – even if it’s packaged in the most outlandish way possible.

Director, screenwriter: Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap
Producer: S M Nazmul Haque
Cast: Raju Roy, Esther Jama Paulino Kenyi, Rupjyoti Das
Cinematography: Shingkhanu Marma
Editing: Sadang Arangham
Production design: Jyoti Sankar Bhattacharya, Harendranath Kalita
Costumes: Reeya Phukan
Music: Bhaskar
Sound: Arnab Borah
Production companies: Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute
Venue: Busan International Film Festival (Vision Asia)
In Assamese, Hindi, English