Black Friday (2004) is Anurag Kashyap’s documentary-style Hindi film, adapted from S. Hussain Zaidi’s book, that reconstructs the investigation into the 1993 Bombay serial bombings through a sprawling mosaic of perpetrators, policemen, and bystanders, offering a searing, unsentimental account of how the attacks were planned, executed, and unravelled.
Teesri Kasam (1966) is Basu Bhattacharya’s National Award-winning Hindi film, adapted from Phanishwarnath Renu’s story, about a naive bullock-cart driver who falls in love with a travelling nautanki dancer, a tender meditation on innocence, unfulfilled love, and the exploitation of folk performers in rural India.
Paroma (1985) is Aparna Sen’s Bengali film about a conventional middle-class housewife whose affair with a younger photographer awakens her sense of self but brings social and personal turmoil, probing questions of female identity and desire within patriarchal society.
Ek Hota Vidushak (1992) is Jabbar Patel’s Marathi film about a folk artist (Vidushak) who rises from rural obscurity to fame and political power, only to lose his artistic soul and personal moorings in the process.
Anurag Kashyap’s Paanch is a gritty, controversial 2003 crime drama—his directorial debut—about five reckless friends in a rock band whose lives spiral into violence, drugs, and murder, a film that remained unreleased due to censorship battles over its dark themes.