The Journal
Essays & Dispatches
Long reads on the films, filmmakers and movements of meaningful Indian cinema.
Tamas (1988)
Tamas (1988) is a made for television film written and directed by Govind Nihalani. Based on a Hindi novel of the same name by Bhisham Sahni, Tamas is set in the backdrop of a small town in the now Pakistani Punjab during the partition of India in 1947.
Sparsh (1980)
Sparsh (1980) is Sai Paranjape’s tender Hindi drama about a fiercely independent blind principal (Naseeruddin Shah) of a school for the blind and a withdrawn widow (Shabana Azmi) who volunteers at the school, exploring how physical disability, pride, and insecurity become emotional barriers to love and human connection.
Black Friday (2004)
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)
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)
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)
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.
Paanch (2003)
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.