An elderly folk singer and grassroots organiser, hailed as 'the people’s poet', is marked by the authorities as a dissident. He is accused of writing lyrics that incited the suicide of a sewage worker. Evidence is scant and witnesses are few, yet in a lower Mumbai courtroom, this barely seems to matter.
With a naturalism and painful humour reminiscent of the Romanian new wave, Court - winner of top prizes at the Venice and Mumbai film festivals - is a quietly angry, absurdist portrait of injustice, caste prejudice, and venal politics in contemporary India, rich with contradiction and complexity.
With thanks to Day For Night
Also showing in The New Indian Cinema season: Temple (Deool) (2011) and Miss Lovely (2012). Part of Deptford Cinema's new Silk Road Film Club strand.
- DIR. CHAITANYA TAMHANE
- CAST. VIRA SATHIDAR, VIVEK GOMBER, GEETANJALI KULKARNI, PRADEEP JOSHI, USHA BANE, SHIRISH PAWAR
- YEAR. 2014
- COUNTRY. INDIA
- RUN-TIME. 116 MINS
- RATING. 15
£6.00 (£4.50 conc.)
Doors 7:00PM
Film 7:30PM
“A funny-cautionary picture of justice at work in Mumbai... this fly on this wall has keen eyes, keen hearing, a keen intelligence”
“An absurdist nightmare of bureaucratic incompetence, indifference and social inequity”
“There are courtroom dramas, and then there’s Court... extremely rational and extremely humane, the film works so well thanks to an intelligent, superbly understated script and a feel for naturalism”