01
Mirch Masala
Why this pick
Its vivid period textures, forceful women’s collective, and critique of male power make it a strong companion to Mandi, though with a more concentrated and confrontational tone.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1983 1h 50m IND
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Mandi
Drama
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Mandi, try these.
01
02
Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro
Why this pick
This shares Mandi’s early-1980s Indian parallel-cinema bite: an ensemble comedy where bureaucrats, developers, and public morality become targets of escalating absurdity.
![PEEPLI [Live] poster](https://artworks.thetvdb.com/banners/movies/28468/posters/28468.jpg)
03
PEEPLI [Live]
Why this pick
Its bustling ensemble and deadpan treatment of media, politics, and public virtue echo Mandi’s knack for making institutional hypocrisy funny without losing compassion for its characters.
04
Welcome to Sajjanpur
Why this pick
Benegal again uses an interconnected local community to create warm, observant satire, with eccentric characters revealing the compromises beneath respectable social life.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
For years, an aging Rukmini Bai (Shabana Azmi) has been the Madame of a brothel in Hyderabad, India.The women in the brothel live in harmony. Rukmini Bai takes pride in the talent of her women, especially Zeenat (Smita Patil) who is a classical singer and Basanti (Neena Gupta) who is a classical dancer. Rukmini Bai is quite possessive about Zeenat and does not let her get engaged in prostitution. She is protective of her from the customers who wish to deflower Zeenat. One day Rukmini Bai gets the news, that she, now, has a new landlord Mr. Gupta (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), whose daughter Malti (Ratna Pathak) is to marry Mr. Aggrawal's (Saeed Jaffrey) son, Sushil, shortly. Given the finesse of Zeenat and Basanti, Mr. Gupta invites Rukmini Bai with her women to perform at the engagement ceremony of his son. During the performance, Sushil is smitten by Zeenat's beauty and approaches her in the dressing room. Zeenat also gets attracted to Sushil. In the meanwhile, it is shown that the City Councillor, Shantidevi (Gita Siddharth), who also runs the Women Organisation of the town is averse to Rukmini Bai and her doings. In a Municipal Committee meeting, she proposes that the brothel should be moved out of town, in order to protect the town from getting corrupted.The Committee agrees to her demands and Rukmini Bai and her women are forced to relocate to a new place in the outskirts of the city, which happens to be near the Dargah of Baba Karak Shah. This attracts a lot of people, and Rukmini Bai's brothel starts thriving.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Shabana Azmi
Rukmini Bai
Amrish Puri
Darvish
Om Puri
Ram Gopal
Naseeruddin Shah
Tungrus