Award-winning documentary explores lives of visually-impaired chess players in India

Twelve-year-old Sai Krishna is your usual bumbling tween. He wants to excel at everything he's invested in, including chess, which is a guiding force in his life. The Chennai boy's zeal is matched by his happy-go-lucky demeanour. It is only when he chides his mother ("Why do you have to tell them I am blind?"), that the enormity of his achievements hit you.

Krishna, who suffers from retinal pigmentation and is fast losing his sight, is part of a small but dedicated group of visually-impaired people who are finding themselves in chess. This is the premise on which British filmmaker Ian McDonald's film Algorithms is based. Chronicling the lives of three Junior Chess Championship hopefuls and their mentor, Charudutt Jadav, McDonald takes us through a 'silent movement' that is equal parts endearing and astonishing.

There's Sai Krishna, of course, and also Darpan Irani, the reigning National Junior Champion who lost his sight after a prolonged disease. Baroda resident Darpan is cool-headed, calculative and best embodies the mature qualities of sportsmanship among the three. Then there's Bhubaneswar's Anant Nayak, who tends to neglect chess for his studies. His economically-backward parents want him to excel in school instead of fiddling with pawns. And there's Charudutt, the only blind player from India to have gone to the Commonwealth Championship, a competition for the sighted. For the 20 years he played professional chess, Charudutt represented India at every 'blind tournament', and says that he gave up chess in 2004 to concentrate on mentoring visually-challenged boys.

"Chess is the only game where we are at par with the sighted. We formed the All India Chess Federation for the Blind (AICFB) to promote and cultivate young talent," he says, as he prepares to leave for Montenegro, where this year's championships are taking place.

The documentary, shot in black and white, takes one through the journey of the three boys from 2009. McDonald, married to the documentary's producer Geeta J, says the idea was triggered by a report he saw in a newsclip years ago. When he was ready, he contacted Charudutt, who gave him access to the national championships, mentoring and international chess competitions. Algorithms was nominated for Britain's National Film Awards in 2014 and showcased at several film festivals. It won awards at the Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) in the same year and the 2013 Durban International Film Festival, to name a few.

McDonald says there was the initial dilemma of shooting blind children. "There was this question of consent and of representing them fairly. But I realised that they are not too different from other subjects. Their natural behaviour made it easy to make the film."

In fact, being a sighted person in a blind word was a disability for him. "I had to be agile and get used to their behavioural patterns. In their world, it is the sighted who are not normal," he says.

Charudutt says blind chess needs better infrastructure and support from the government. "They finance our international tours, but beyond that, we need recognition, facilities like job quotas, and the status of a chess player as a sportsperson," he says. He adds that in Maharashtra, they have started a pilot project to teach chess in blind schools. "The government needs to help this effort financially," he says.

The documentary also looks at the lives of the children's parents, all of whom can see. For them, the biggest problem is choosing between academics or chess for their children. Darpan's mother, for one, gets worried when her son loses. In the film, she talks about the battering his confidence takes after losing a game. Darpan is the only blind boy in the school where he studies.

Sai Krishna's sister, too, has the same anxieties. "He doesn't want me to call him blind, but how will he cope when he grows up?" she asks. He was beginning to lose his sight when he was young and, in anticipation, his parents put him in a school for the blind. Anant's parents are poor, and look up to their son to earn for the family one day. "Anant is extraordinarily humble and always informed. He is always talking about British politics or football, but never his problems," says McDonald.

As the documentary comes to a close with the talent hunt for another batch, the camera pans to a young girl, Sumitra. McDonald later says that she did not pursue the game enough, and this is evident of the under-representation of girls in the tournament. "Parents are reluctant as this involves a lot of travel," he says.