10 great modern Indian independent films

The terms ‘independent’ or ‘indie’ are often used to identify art or culture outside the mainstream, but what constitutes truly independent cinema is tricky to define. For India, independent cinema is a relatively new phenomenon, following on the heels of the 1970s and 80s wave of alternative filmmaking known as Parallel Cinema. 

Two major factors led to the emergence of a new Indian independent film scene in the 2010s. Firstly, industry status was finally bestowed upon Indian cinema in 2001, which gave it an economic autonomy and legitimacy, opening up new ways of financing films. Secondly, the late 1990s saw the opening of India’s first multiplex in New Delhi by PVR, with choice of screens meaning both the fragmentation of the Indian film audience and the birth of a new multiplex crowd with different tastes and a growing interest in film genres. 

2012 was a banner year for the consolidation of new Indian independent cinema, with the release of Ship of Theseus, Peddlers and Gangs of Wasseypur. The latter two-part crime epic pointed towards ways in which filmmakers would start to fuse the traditions of mainstream popular Indian cinema with more unconventional indie aesthetics. The rise of streaming platforms such as Netflix also helped to augment new Indian independent cinema, offering up both an alternate revenue stream and bringing a younger audience to many new and exciting filmmakers. 

This year, Payal Kapadia’s masterly Mumbai-set drama All We Imagine as Light – a poetic narrative centred on three young nurses navigating the chaotic imperfections of urban India – not only became the first Indian film to be selected for Cannes competition for 30 years, but it also went on to win the festival’s prestigious Grand Prix. Yet, as Kapadia’s film was co-financed abroad, it also stirred up a contentious debate about the politics of film financing in India. If the money for a film originates in the UK, Germany, Canada or France, does this make it less of an Indian film? Can India not claim it as their own?

But this debate obscures a more pertinent point: that the various funding bodies and organisations that have been set up over many decades in India do not have a healthy track record when it comes to the more experimental side of Indian cinema. This rich aesthetic vein has never been fully supported or endorsed by the broader system. You only have to turn and look back at Parallel Cinema era filmmakers like Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani; the latter in particular was left out in the cold for many years and essentially ostracised. 

Kapadia is not the first to buck the trend and seek financing outside of India, but in doing so, both A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021) and now All We Imagine as Light demonstrate less of a breakthrough and more of a triumph for an Indian experimental tradition that has never really been given its due.

Director: Kiran Rao

Co-produced by and also featuring Aamir Khan, Kiran Rao’s debut feature was one of the first in the new wave of Indian independent films from the 2010s. Dhobi Ghat weaves together the lives of four characters from disparate backgrounds into a microcosm of contemporary Mumbai. 

Shot on multiple formats including Super 16mm and Mini DV, and much of it on location, Rao’s Mumbai is a metropolis populated by loners, misfits and migrants. It’s a film about the act of looking: Arun (Aamir Khan) is a reclusive painter, Shai (Monica Dogra) an amateur photographer, and Yasmin (Kriti Malhotra) a video diarist. However, their gazes are determined by broader socio-economics such as class. Interestingly, the one whose work is not engaged in ‘looking’ is Munna (Prateik Babbar), a ‘dhobi’ (laundry washer) and symbol of the underclass, whose gaze is altogether fixed in a reality from which he cannot escape. 

Director: Anurag Kashyap

This five-hour crime saga is the cornerstone of the new Indian independent cinema and catapulted director Anurag Kashyap to international stardom. The story centres on the coal mafia in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, where warring crime families are caught up in a violent power struggle hinged on revenge, loyalty and blood feud. 

Featuring one of the most memorable ensemble casts in Indian cinema, the film launched the careers of many new faces, including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Pankaj Tripathi and Richa Chadha. Backed with an influential soundtrack, Kashyap’s stylised realism is full of an exuberance that rivals the likes of The Godfather (1972), Scarface (1983) and City of God (2002). Gangs of Wasseypur has an energy all of its own though: rollicking, playful and very infectious.

Director: Anand Gandhi

The rise of new Indian independent cinema has meant many fresh and exciting voices. Ship of Theseus, the debut feature of Anand Gandhi, led to widespread critical acclaim, including within the mainstream Indian film industry. Shot over two years in Mumbai and Stockholm with a Canon DSLR camera and on a low budget, Gandhi’s global epic is a deeply philosophical work that deals with the ethics of contemporary life. 

Three intersecting stories involving a visually impaired photographer, a Jain monk and a stockbroker articulate a very personal search for the self, which proves ultimately incompatible with the realities of capitalism. Sadly, Ship of Theseus was never released in UK cinemas, but it has gained a small cult following. It’s a technically accomplished work with a discordant intellectualism rarely found in Indian cinema.

Director: Rajat Kapoor

What if you decided to live your life based on what you see rather than what you believe? This philosophical concept is at the core of writer-director Rajat Kapoor’s brilliantly imagined Delhi-set family comedy. Produced by Drishyam Films, one of the new independent Indian film companies, Ankhon Dekhi follows the rebellion of Rajesh Bauji (Sanjay Mishra) who starts to question the certainties of daily life as nothing more than an illusion. 

In doing so, Bauji’s uncompromising stance and belief in his new philosophy leads to comic and anarchic situations while increasingly alienating family and friends. Bauji’s refusal to fit into the norms of society brings to the surface unresolved family histories, such as his strained relationship with his younger brother (Rajat Kapoor). With a talented ensemble cast, a beautiful soundtrack and Mishra’s endearing performance, Ankhon Dekhi is a fine showcase for the often-overlooked faculties of actor-writer-director Rajat Kapoor.

Director: Ritesh Batra

Ritesh Batra’s 2013 film The Lunchbox was an unexpected international success story and the perfect showcase for the late Irrfan Khan’s commanding screen presence. Ila (Nimrat Kaur), an unhappy housewife, prepares a tiffin lunch for her husband at work, but it is unintentionally delivered to Saajan Fernandes (Irrfan Khan), a widower who is nearing retirement. Fernandes recognises the love and care with which the food has been prepared and a relationship ensues via the daily delivery of tiffin. 

Both Ila and Fernandes sense a connection, which is explored with great sensitivity and subtlety through Batra’s finely tuned script. However, it is in the quieter, contemplative moments in the company of a lonely Fernandes in his apartment where the film draws out a piercing emotional resonance. This is a love story, but it is also a film about growing old, the pain of loneliness and the pleasures of food. 

Director: Chaitanya Tamhane

One of the ways in which new Indian independent cinema connects to the Parallel Cinema of the past has been through its foregrounding of caste. In Chaitanya Tamhane’s award-winning debut feature Court, the story concerns Narayan Kamble (Vira Sathidar), a folk singer and social activist who is accused of inciting a lower-caste sewage worker to commit suicide. Kamble is a protestor who uses his folk songs as a form of socio-political retaliation, speaking out against inequalities such as caste oppression. 

There are fascinating overlaps with Anand Patwardhan’s documentary Jai Bhim Comrade (2011), also a rich and complex dissection of the caste system. Tamhane’s film has a quasi-observational slant, detailing the machinations of the judicial system but through a measured tableau of master shots. It takes a non-judgemental look at both the prosecuting and defence lawyers, played by Vivek Gomber and Geetanjali Kulkarni. 

Director: Gurvinder Singh

The second part in Gurvinder Singh’s epic Punjab trilogy, which also includes Alms for a Blind Horse (2011) and Crescent Night (2022), The Fourth Direction explores the impact of the separatist Punjab insurgency on the lives of ordinary people. Set in the 1980s, the narrative intertwines two stories: one of two Hindu friends, Jugal and Raj, who board a train to Amritsar, and another of a villager, Joginder, whose family is terrorised by both the militants and the military. 

Gurvinder Singh trained under Parallel Cinema director Mani Kaul, and his films adopt an austere, elliptical style, favouring a slow pace that feeds into the atmospheric tension. Shot by the superb Satya Rai Nagpaul, Gurvinder’s regular director of photography, the beautifully composed visuals are supported by an eclectic and experimental sound design. This is a key film in helping to reclaim the history of the Punjab insurgency, told from the perspective of civilians who were caught in the crossfire. 

Director: Rahi Anil Barve

Proof of the ways in which independent Indian cinema has diversified its approach to film genre, Tumbbad is one of the most innovative and original horror films to have come out of India in many decades. Made over six years, it draws on primal imagery from Indian mythology, such as the Mother Goddess, to explore historically universal themes, including materialism. 

Set in rural Maharashtra, it conjures a rich ambience of dread and desolation, which writer and director Rahi Anil Barve sustains over an extensive time period, from 1918 to 1947. The monster, the demon god Hastar, is a malevolent entity from Indian folklore, often depicted as a figure of greed and hunger. Sohum Shah, who also co-produced the film along with Anand Gandhi, is notable in the lead role as the infatuated Vinayak Rao.

Director: Arun Karthick

From Tamil director Arun Karthick, Nasir is set against the backdrop of a modern India where, since coming to power in 2014, Modi’s Hindu-first government has created a hostile climate for Muslims, inciting mob violence and incidents of lynching. The story tracks the everyday life of the eponymous salesman (Valavane Koumarane), who works in a local textile store and is completely unaware of the anti-Muslim sentiments that have taken hold of the ghetto. 

Karthick spent two years immersed in a Muslim neighbourhood in Coimbatore, and the film’s on-location shooting lends it an authenticity and palpable sense of place that augments the slow-paced narrative. He gradually builds a mood of disquiet through a semi-observational style with an open frame. As the film is shot in the blocky 4:3 ratio, Nasir is made to appear boxed into a world that will eventually come crashing down around him, ending with a chilling denouement.

Director: Payal Kapadia

A Night of Knowing Nothing focuses on an enigmatic university student who writes letters to her estranged lover. But in Payal Kapadia’s daring documentary-essay, these letters become a gateway into dreams and memories of political resistance. The unstructured narrative, full of haunting anecdotes, emerges as a personal testimony of the state-sanctioned violence that was mobilised by Modi to suppress the united front forged by students across campuses such as Jawaharlal Nehru University in India in 2016. The violence was part of a much broader campaign to discredit leftist voices and silence critics of his regime. 

If Kapadia’s work is a perceptive chronicle about the value of political dissent, it also comes out of a lineage of alternative political cinema, with subtle ties to Indian Parallel Cinema. But what makes this work altogether unique is the intersectional approach whereby gender, caste and politics conjoin into a lasting experimental tryst.

All We Imagine as Light is in UK cinemas from 29 November.

A Night of Knowing Nothing screens at BFI Southbank from 1 December.

Omar Ahmed’s book The Revolution of Indian Parallel Cinema in the Global South (1968-1995) is published by Bloomsbury in February 2025.