Hindi cinema loves a hero who beats up ten men. It is less keen on films that look hard at power, caste, class, and money. A few got made anyway. Most did poorly at the box office and slid out of memory. These ten deserve better. Some lean left. Some are just angry at everyone. All of them have something to say, and none of them talk down to you.
1. Garam Hawa (1973)
MS Sathyu’s first feature is a good place to start. It follows Salim Mirza, a shoe maker in Agra. Partition has come and gone, but he refuses to leave his home. Relatives pack up for Pakistan. Banks turn him down. Landlords treat him like a guest who overstayed. The story comes from Ismat Chughtai, and Kaifi Azmi worked on the screenplay with Shama Zaidi. Balraj Sahni plays Salim and died just before the film came out. Farooq Shaikh made his debut here, reportedly for Rs 750. Censors sat on it for months, worried about communal tension. It competed at Cannes in 1974. The ending is simple, and people still talk about it.
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2. Ankur (1974)
Shyam Benegal’s debut kicked off the parallel cinema wave in Hindi films. Benegal drew on the Hyderabad region where he grew up. Surya, a bored young landlord’s son, is sent to a Telangana village to look after the family farm. He starts to take an interest in Lakshmi, a lower-caste servant. Her husband Kishtayya is a deaf potter. Shabana Azmi played Lakshmi in her first film and won the National Award for Best Actress. Anant Nag played Surya, in his Hindi debut. The title means “seedling”. The last shot is a boy throwing a stone at a landlord’s window. It is one of the most famous endings in Indian cinema. Benegal followed it with Nishant, Manthan and Bhumika.
3. Kissa Kursi Ka (1977)
Amrit Nahata was a politician who decided to make a political satire. A power-hungry leader climbs to the top. A mute woman named Janta, played by Shabana Azmi, stands in for the public. Most viewers read it as a jab at Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay. The Emergency was on, so the film was in deep trouble. Prints were taken from the censor board and burned at the Maruti factory in Gurgaon. The Shah Commission looked into it later. Sanjay Gandhi and information minister V.C. Shukla were convicted in 1979, though the verdict was overturned on appeal. Nahata remade the film from scratch. Utpal Dutt, Raj Babbar and Manohar Singh were in the cast. It is a rough film, but the story behind it beats most thrillers.
4. Aakrosh (1980)
Govind Nihalani spent years as a cinematographer, mostly for Benegal. This was his first film as a director. Vijay Tendulkar wrote it, based on a real case. Lahanya Bhiku, a tribal man played by Om Puri, is accused of killing his wife Nagi, played by Smita Patil. He barely says a word. A young lawyer, played by Naseeruddin Shah, tries to defend him. Amrish Puri plays a lawyer on the other side. Slowly, we see who is really behind it all. Men with power had abused Nagi, and the system wants the case closed fast. The single scream near the end is hard to forget. Few films say this much with so little dialogue.
5. Ardh Satya (1983)
Nihalani’s second film turned Om Puri into the face of serious Hindi cinema. He plays Anant Velankar, a young police officer in Bombay. His father was a violent constable, played by Amrish Puri. Anant hates that world and wants to do the job honestly. But a local politician and gangster named Rama Shetty has the whole system in his pocket. Sadashiv Amrapurkar played Rama Shetty and got a Filmfare award for it. The story comes from a Marathi short story by S.D. Panwalkar. Smita Patil plays Jyotsna, the one soft spot in Anant’s life. The title comes from a poem by Dilip Chitre, which is read in the film. It is a tough watch, and a very good one.
6. Mirch Masala (1987)
Ketan Mehta sets this one in colonial Gujarat in the 1940s. A tax collector called the Subedar, played by Naseeruddin Shah, rides into a village with his men. He sees Sonbai, played by Smita Patil, and decides he wants her. She runs into a chilli factory staffed by women. The gatekeeper, Abu Mian, played by Om Puri, refuses to open the gate. In the end, the women decide to fight back. The story is based on a Gujarati tale by Chunilal Madia. Deepti Naval, Supriya Pathak and Ratna Pathak Shah are among the cast. Smita Patil died in December 1986 at just 31, and the film came out after her death. The final scene, with chilli powder as a weapon, is a crowd pleaser.
7. Tamas (1988)
This one started as a novel by Bhisham Sahni, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1975. Sahni wrote it from what he saw in Rawalpindi in 1947. Here is a fun link: he was Balraj Sahni’s younger brother, the same Balraj from Garam Hawa. The story is simple and chilling. A tanner named Nathu, played by Om Puri, is paid to kill a pig. The carcass is dumped outside a mosque, and riots break out. Nihalani made it for Doordarshan, and it aired in parts in 1988. Protests tried to stop the telecast. Courts refused. Sahni himself acted in the series, and a shorter film cut also exists. It shows how easily hate can be manufactured.
8. Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi (2005)
Sudhir Mishra follows three friends from the late 1960s to the Emergency. Siddharth (Shiney Ahuja) is a dreamer who drifts into Delhi’s fixer world. Vikram (Kay Kay Menon) goes to Bihar to join the Naxalite movement. Geeta (Chitrangada Singh, in her debut) is caught between them. The title comes from a famous Ghalib couplet. Shantanu Moitra composed the music, and Swanand Kirkire wrote the lyrics. “Bavra Mann” is the song most people remember. The film is about how big ideals turn into small compromises. It does not pick a side. It simply asks what happens to young idealists when real life shows up.
9. Shanghai (2012)
Dibakar Banerjee’s fourth film is based on Vassilis Vassilikos’s novel Z, the same book behind Costa-Gavras’s 1969 film. The setting is Bharat Nagar, a made-up town where a big business park is planned. Local politicians promise to turn it into the next Shanghai. An activist, Dr. Ahmedi, played by Prosenjit Chatterjee, is hit by a truck after speaking out. Abhay Deol plays a bureaucrat who is sent to investigate. Emraan Hashmi plays Joginder Parmar, a small-time video man who stumbles into the case, and he is excellent in it. Kalki Koechlin and Farooq Shaikh are also in the cast. The film is about land, “development” and who pays for it.
10. Kaun Kitne Paani Mein (2015)
Director Nila Madhab Panda made this satire about water, caste and honour killing. It released on 28 August 2015. Two villages sit side by side. Upri, on the hill, is home to upper-caste people with no water. Bairi, below, is home to lower-caste people who have it. Saurabh Shukla plays the proud old king. Kunal Kapoor and Radhika Apte play lovers from opposite sides. Gulshan Grover is also in the cast. The film made about Rs 0.29 crore at the box office. It is uneven, and the opening is a bit preachy. Still, the idea that the king is whoever has the water is sharp.