New Delhi, Feb. 19 -- Before it becomes a film about empires and infrastructure, Madhusree Dutta's Flying Tigers is about whether a confused mind can still tell the truth. In 2015, nearing the end of her life, her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother kept repeating one warning: Close the windows. The tiger is coming! At the time, they were living in Dutta's Mumbai apartment. The geography made the claim impossible, yet the filmmaker treated it as evidence. She had learnt one thing while caregiving for her mother - Alzheimer's patients rarely invent events. Rather, their minds distort the chronology or perspective of an event. The question, then, was not why her mother had imagined tigers but when she had actually seen them.

Tracing the riddle le...