National Film Archive of India's 125 Great Indian Films

The Unvanquished is the second part of the Bangladesh Apu film series about a boy named Apu who gets a scholarship to study at a College in Calcutta. His mother is alone and torn between wanting him to be successful and not wanting him to leave her alone.

Apu, now a jobless ex-student dreaming vaguely of a future as a writer, is invited to join an old college friend on a trip up-country to a village wedding.

Four friends from Calcutta who have very different personalities make a holiday excursion into the country, to a tiny village in the state of Bihar where they set themselves up in a bungalow. A series of minor events, all connected to their respective reactions to their new environment, reveals their characters more deeply.

The narrative deals with the dreams and aspiration of a 16-old-girl, Sheetal (Meena Kumari) caught in the vortex of uncertainty and morality. Desperate for engagement with her neighbour, Shravan (Nasir Khan) who is equally drawn towards her but she is forced into meaningless wedlock with a sick old man.

Unni is the last male heir of a decaying feudal family in rural Kerala. His inability to accept the socio-economic changes of a new society causes him to gradually withdraw into isolation and paranoia.

The film tells, in flashback, the story of Suresh Sinha, a famous film director and his relationship with an aspiring actress.

The playmates of Krishna are insulted by a female villager who splashes water on them. They take revenge by stealing butter from her house. When they are beaten up by the woman, they again take revenge with the aid of Krishna. He receives a gift of fruit for his help but gives it away. Krishna then enters the room of a wealthy merchant and his w...

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Alone, his wife, Sarbojaya, looks after her rebellious daughter, Durga, and her young son, Apu, as well as Harihar's elderly aunt Indir. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life, while th...

This classic film chronicles the life of Tukaram (17th C.), one of Maharashtra’s most popular saint poets, activating the 20th century resonances of his turning away from courtly Sanskrit towards vernacular rhythms of religious poetry.

An impressionistic biographical look at Siddheshwari Devi (1908–1977), the classical Indian singer whose voice was appreciated by the maharajas and public alike.

After an old college friend offers him a job at an iron foundry, the upright and honest Ishwar leaves a shanty town on the outskirts of Calcutta where he lives with a group of refugees from East Bengal. With plans to forge a solid living for himself, sister Sita and Abhiram, an orphaned boy he offers a home to, Ishwar is accused of selling out a...

Rahul, the son-in-law of an old industrialist and one of the heirs to his fortune, clashes with Dinesh, the industrialist’s nephew who is openly unscrupulous. Rahul, on his part, conceals his personal ambition under a cloak of liberalism and encourages indigenous production.

In 1870s India, Charulata is an isolated, artistically inclined woman who sees little of her busy journalist husband, Bhupati. Realizing that his wife is alienated and unhappy, he convinces his cousin, Amal, to spend time with Charulata and nourish her creative impulses. Amal is a fledgling poet himself, and he and Charulata bond over their shar...

A film about three of our leading visual artists, Bhupen Khakar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram. It takes, as its point of departure, a glass mural on which all three were working, then zeros into each of them. It links them to their physical and mental worlds through cinematic devices like associative sounds, variable light and montage. Compo...

Purushan, a student on his way to Delhi, becomes obsessed with the tragic suicide of a young drummer. He collects many people to go with him to tell the boy’s mother.

A 'filmscape' on the Kashmir valley.

Those born on Independence Day in 1947 were selected from different parts of India and interviewed to know their hopes and desires, ambitions, hobbies, fears and frustrations and the result is this unique film.

Several stories depicting the landscapes and fauna of India are mixed with documentary footage.

Traveling the length and breadth of the country, S. Sukhdev constructs, a panoramic, non-narrated study of Indian life in the late 1960s. Shot across villages, deserts, countryside, and cities, the film observes daily labor, leisure, and movement without commentary, allowing humor, contradiction, and social texture to emerge organically. The res...

Four men, each peculiar in his own way, embark on a quest to reason with the estranged wife of the protagonist. This is considered to be Ghatak's autobiographical film.

Docudrama about the life of Rabindranath Tagore, Indian polymath—poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter, who reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art, becoming in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The film was released during Tagore's ...

Members of an English settlement cope with the exotic lure of life in India.

Tackling the theme of identity from the perspective of Asian and Afro-Caribbean actors, the film emerged from an acting workshop exploring the relationship between acting idioms in theatre and cinema led by Kumar Shahani and Alaknanda Samarth.

The arrival of a travelling circus sends ripples through the inhabitants of a remote Keralan village.

This documentary draws a sensitive, unsensational portrait of the desert and the people who inhabit it, the Toubous.

A Burmah-Shell–sponsored “Life in India” documentary, directed by Fali Billimoria, portraying a Travancore fishing family’s work and home life, with attention to everyday labor, household economy, and generational change.

In the 1980s, a lawyer defends a tribal man who is under arrest for killing his own wife. As he proceeds with the case, he learns about the harsh life of scheduled tribes in India.

A poor farmer conquers the love of an Indian princess, whose brother wants to kill their father to become king.

An "untouchable" girl and a Brahmin boy fall in love, but the strict caste system and the gossip of the villagers threaten to keep them apart.

A well-off family is paid an unexpected, and rather unwanted, visit by a man claiming to be the woman's long-lost uncle. The initial suspicion with which they greet the man slowly dissolves as he regales them with stories of his travels.

A donkey strays into a village dominated by the upper caste Brahmins.

Bimal is a taxi-driver in a small provincial town. He lives alone, his taxi (an old 1920 Chevrolet jalopy which he named Jagaddal) is his only companion and, although very battered, it is the apple of Bimal's eye.

'Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Ata Hai' revolves around the Pintos and the people connected to them. There's Albert who's pretty much angry at everybody. His brother Dominic who thinks it's better to be jobless than to work an underpaid job, his patient sister Joan who works at a sari shop, his independent girlfriend Stella who feels under-apprecia...

Three brothers, each raised in different religious households, reunite after many years in a chance encounter. They set out to take revenge on those responsible for separating them.

This classic opens with a sensational low-angle circular track movement as Chandika cult followers meet in a dungeon of flickering lights and deep shadow. As the more rationalist King Krantivarma (Varde) banned human or animal sacrifices from the increasingly fanatical festivals dedicated to the goddess, the cult's high priest (Chandramohan/Date...

Dr. Bhaskar Bannerjee struggles with his patients' suffering and the darkness and poverty he confronts daily. He treats cancer patient Anand who upon learning of his impending death determines to use the time he has left to the absolute fullest.

Nina is a rich and spoiled girl. Dilip accidentally meets her and starts liking her, not knowing that she is already engaged.

A well-known singer gives up her profession to marry a young doctor, but begins to feel neglected by her husband. The return of her former boyfriend adds fuel to the fire.

Vandana's husband, Arun, gets killed in an air crash after they secretly get married but no one accepts their marriage. Thereafter, she is forced to put her child up for adoption and later work as his nanny to stay by his side.

A family on the brink of disaster awaits the return of one who’s rumoured to have made a fortune abroad.

A hagiography of the legendary Tamil saint poetess of the Sangam period.

A poor young man named Raj joins a criminal gang to feed his mother. But when he falls in love with Rita, he decides to reform himself for her.

During the reign of Akbar the Great, a young singer sets out to avenge his father's death and challenges the killer to a musical duel.

The tragic story set in the late 1930s, just before famine struck Bengal. It tells of the marriage of a dumpy middle-aged salesman of small goods to a beautiful teenager, and how, after initial days of happiness together, a series of misfortunes strike which slowly embitter the man.

In 1930s British-ruled Bengal, a prison-doctor falls in love with a convicted murderer with past connections to a freedom fighter.

Kotayya (Ranga Rao) is a kind man. He marries Rami. She succumbs to pressure from Gopala Swamy and elopes with him, leaving her husband. Rami and Gopala successfully plan and send Kotayya to jail. After returning from jail, Kotayya becomes a rowdy drunkard. He plans to take revenge and kill Gopala Swamy.

Mother India is an Indian film from director Mehboob Khan from 1957 and is the most successful and popular Hindi film.

In a drought-stricken city in India, the emperor Maharaja Dhiraj Chandrasen, who has two wives, and no children, orders all kinds of rituals to appease the Rain Gods

In a world that both glamorizes and patronizes her, a successful film star begins to unravel under the weight of the roles imposed upon her, drifting between studios and her personal life as she spirals into an identity crisis.

Bhuvan Shome is a lonely widower, a proud old man and a strict disciplinarian. Looking back on the trodden path, strewn with staunch determination and drab attitudes, Bhuvan Shome, a thoroughly unenchanted man, seeks escape in a holiday.