Mondo Meyer Upakhyan (2002), also released as A Tale of a Naughty Girl, is a Bengali drama by Buddhadev Dasgupta about a fourteen-year-old girl who defies her mother’s plan to sell her into prostitution in favour of returning to school.
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.
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.
Tahaan (2008) is a Hindi drama film by Santosh Sivan about a young Kashmiri boy who embarks on a journey to recover his beloved donkey after it’s taken away to settle a family debt.
Gulaal is a 2009 Hindi film directed by Anurag Kashyap. Set in present day Rajasthan, this film explores the dark sides of power, royalty, student politics, quest for legitimacy and social hypocrisy through a fictitious secessionist movement which aims to create a separate Rajputana.