Once upon a nation…: Foreign films set in India are finally getting it right

It’s hard to spin tales about a culture one doesn’t understand. It is harder still, as a filmmaker, to ignore the most populous country in the world, home to the world’s largest audience, market and consumer base, by numbers.

And so the grating discomfort continues, as films and series produced in the West seek to “include” India. Let’s just say it: We’re tired of the flyblown vistas, chaotic bylanes, self-serving spiritual quests, and tired of that one bhangra tune they all seem to play. (It’s Mundian Toh Bach Ke, from 1998; it’s probably ringing in your head now, and we apologise.)
Thankfully, more movie-makers are making an effort to break free of this rut, resulting in films that tell complex, authentic and universal stories set in India. What does it take to get it right? Quite simply: Time / effort, immersion in the culture, and an authentic tale. Take a look.
What women want
On a raw-cement terrace surrounded by other buildings, a teenager talks about her dreams of being a singer. She shyly begins to rap some lines she has written. Renuka, a much older woman, offers her a sip from the bottle in her hand.
Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov’s lesbian love story The Shameless (2024; starring Anasuya Sengupta and Omara Shetty), is set in the dark underbelly of a contemporary Indian city. It is brutal, tender and unexpected, and spotlights a side of urban India that many urban Indians will never see.
It is also, somehow, a universal story about being a woman in this country.
Renuka is a chain-smoking, foul-mouthed sex worker on the run after killing her last client. Devika is a 17-year-old whose virginity is being auctioned. They aren’t looking for love or friendship when they meet, but when they unexpectedly find it, they begin a fight to free themselves from this world.
The film, which plays out largely in Hindi, was nominated in the Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Sengupta (who plays Renuka) became the first Indian to win the top acting prize at Cannes, the Un Certain Regard Best Actress Award.
Much of the story is based in real life, and Bojanov’s journey towards it began when he first read William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (2009), a decade ago. He then travelled to India, looking to adapt four stories from the book into a documentary.
He spent months here, meeting a range of Indians whose lives mirrored the troubled love, conflicted sexuality and lusts for art and freedom reflected in the book. The documentary was eventually abandoned, but two women Bojanov met in north Karnataka inspired the feature film.
How does it all end? Why ruin a work of art. Seek out the film to find out.
Race against time
John Upchurch had the idea for Mango Dreams in his head for years.
It was built around the concept of two brothers separated in childhood, reuniting 70 years later. Would any sort of bond remain? The filmmaker knew how he wanted the tale to unfold. What he didn’t have for it was a setting.
Then he met and married IT executive Pallabita Patnaik, in 2006. Through her, he began to learn about Indian culture and history. The story of Partition seemed like the ideal background for his tale.
About 10 years later, he had fleshed out his screenplay with co-writer Mazahir Rahim, assembled his cast, and was ready to begin filming.
Mango Dreams (2016) is about a Hindu doctor in the early stages of dementia (Ram Gopal Bajaj), and a Muslim autorickshaw driver (Pankaj Tripathi), who form an unlikely friendship as they travel across India in search of the doctor’s childhood home.
The film takes the viewer from Ahmedabad to Amritsar, through small towns, villages and sprawling fields, as one man’s failing memory turns their quest into a race against time.
“While writing and while filming, I really tried to listen, and bounce ideas off people like Rahim and my wife,” says Upchurch. “I was very conscious that this is not my culture. I was conscious of my limitations. So I consulted a lot.”
Mango Dreams won the 2017 Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival Jury Award for Best Film. It also won Bajaj and Tripathi Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards at the event.
Upchurch now plans to remake it in Hindi, if he can find a producer to fund it. The English version is currently streaming on the platform Open Theatre.
Strong-arm tactics
TV anchor Cyrus Sahukar, playing himself, provides commentary at a pitching tryout. On the field, American baseball scouts JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm) and the curmudgeonly Ray Poitevint (Alan Arkin) are watching closely as bowlers step up to pitch a baseball.
Million Dollar Arm (2014; English), directed by the Australian Craig Gillespie, straddles two worlds. On the one hand is the ancient Taj Mahal, burning incense, crowds roaring for cricket and a goat being transported on a two-wheeler. On the other is a hard-partying, sex-obsessed, narcissistic baseball agent roaming across urban India. With his career in a tailspin, he is here in a last-ditch effort to save himself. Could India’s talented amateur cricketers yield a few winning pitchers for the US?
The film follows the true stories of Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, who won a reality show staged here in 2008 and became the first Indians to sign a contract with a major American baseball team.
Set and shot partly in Mumbai, the film follows Singh (Suraj Sharma of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi) and Patel (Madhur Mittal, who had a key role in Slumdog Millionaire) as they leave their city and navigate a new country, culture and sport. It follows JB too, as his life changes in ways he hadn’t anticipated. He is now guardian to two youngsters far from home. All three have a lot to prove.