How many times have you picked up the phone only to be told to hold for “an important call”, and wondered where the hell it was coming from? Canadian filmmaker Samir Mallal knew a lot of these telemarketing intrusions were coming from India, his parents' homeland, and the more he looked into the phenomenon of outsourcing phone services, the more he realized that there was something symbolic about this global tide change in the labour pool.

“Basically, I read an article,” Mallal admits on the phone from his home in Montreal. He and directing partner Ben Addelman, who worked with him on the breakthrough documentary Discordia””another on-the-ground look at change in a hypercharged social setting, in this case Montreal's Concordia University””talked about investigating the phenomenon themselves. The result was Bombay Calling, a feature documentary screening twice a night at the Pacific Cinémathèque, Tuesday to Thursday (August 29 to 31).

The young filmmakers travelled to India in mid-2004 and ended up spending the better part of a year, on and off, staying close to a bunch of call-centre workers in Bombay as they perfected their English, fell in love, high-fived each other, drank too much, and studied Crocodile Dundee to learn about culture clash. Mallal and Addelman had anticipated none of this.

“The idea was to do something about modern India,” Mallal explains. “It's a place where all these things involving tradition and change intersect. Basically, we looked for a place where we could find enough people to provide characters for an interesting story.”

They first examined the IT centres of Bangalore, but the booming area's industrial parks, with their “green glass and clean campuses”, didn't convey a real sense of India old and new on a collision course. So they went to Bombay, where Mallal has family, and hit the crowded streets. Luck arrived when the first person they bumped into worked at Epicentre, the outfit they ended up using as their focus.

“As soon as I got there, I realized that a month wouldn't be enough to really convey the complexity of what these young people are going through. We wanted to let them tell their own stories. It goes against our way of thinking to see that people could be benefiting from globalization, so it greys the subject to some extent; we show what's happening and let the audience make up its own mind.”

Indeed, the codirectors don't draw any conclusions about globalization. But Mallal does see it as part of an ongoing debate about India's identity

“Just because young people are faking an accent and taking a more American approach doesn't mean they're going to lose their identities. That identity will change over time, and already things have shifted with young people getting more money and autonomy. My mother, for example, felt she had to leave India to do what she wanted, and that isn't so true now. People are excited and taking risks, and that's really great. But some social problems are getting ignored in the rush to change.”

Mallal, who turns 29 this week, will be here for all six screenings to talk about the NFB-funded movie and its release on DVD. In fact, one might assume that operators are standing by.