Indian Movies — a catalogue of Indian cinema, from Ray to Rajamouli

Pather Panchali

1955 · Bengali · dir. Satyajit Ray

The film that put Indian cinema on the festival map. A village childhood observed without sentiment; the train sequence alone is worth the watch.

Mother India

1957 · Hindi · dir. Mehboob Khan

An epic about a peasant woman's endurance that became a national myth. Long, melodramatic, and still astonishing in scale.

Mughal-e-Azam

1960 · Hindi/Urdu · dir. K. Asif

Sixteen years in the making. The court intrigue is secondary to the sets, the music and the sheer ambition of the thing.

Sholay

1975 · Hindi · dir. Ramesh Sippy

Two small-time crooks, a retired policeman and a bandit the whole country learned to quote. The template for the masala blockbuster.

Nayakan

1987 · Tamil · dir. Mani Ratnam

A Bombay slum boy rises to become a don. Kamal Haasan gives one of the great performances of Indian film, and Ilaiyaraaja's score does the rest.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge

1995 · Hindi · dir. Aditya Chopra

The romance that ran in one Mumbai theatre for more than two decades. If you only know one Bollywood film, it is probably this one.

Lagaan

2001 · Hindi · dir. Ashutosh Gowariker

Villagers challenge the colonial administration to a cricket match to get out of a tax. Four hours that feel like two.

Gangs of Wasseypur

2012 · Hindi · dir. Anurag Kashyap

Three generations of a coal-belt feud across five and a half hours. Crude, funny, violent and endlessly quotable.

Baahubali 2

Baahubali 2: The Conclusion

2017 · Telugu/Tamil · dir. S. S. Rajamouli

The film that made the rest of India pay attention to Telugu cinema. Mythic scale, no irony, and it works.

Jai Bhim

2021 · Tamil · dir. T. J. Gnanavel

A courtroom drama based on a real custodial-death case. Suriya plays the lawyer; the film belongs to Lijomol Jose.

Kantara

2022 · Kannada · dir. Rishab Shetty

Forest, folklore and a land dispute, ending in a ritual sequence that nobody who saw it in a theatre has forgotten.

12th Fail

2023 · Hindi · dir. Vidhu Vinod Chopra

A boy from a poor Chambal village tries, and tries again, to pass the civil-service exam. Modest, honest, and a word-of-mouth hit.

A hundred years of Indian cinema, one film at a time

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