Shyam Benegal turned 90 on December 14. His films, steeped in social realism, reflected and reimagined India, one story at a time. The Federal takes a peek at 12 films by the pioneer of Parallel Cinema
When Shyam Benegal arrived on the scene, Indian cinema was awash with melodrama, star power, and formulaic storytelling. But Benegal offered an alternative vision, and built a new axis altogether. He turns 90 (on December 14), it feels only right to honour the man who gave us consciousness. Benegal’s cinema was never content with escapism. His characters didn’t sing their way out of sorrow — they sat with it, argued with it, and sometimes surrendered to it. His stories, often drawn from the soil of small-town India, exposed the fractures of caste, gender, and class with disquieting clarity. Yet, his films never felt like lectures. They felt like life itself, messy, unresolved, and profoundly human.
In an industry that celebrates the solitary ‘hero,’ Benegal turned his gaze toward the marginal, the forgotten, and the flawed. He found his heroines in housemaids, milkmaids, and brothel madams. He showed us that rebellion can come in the form of a glance, a whispered defiance, or the quiet churning of milk into butter. And he did this without spectacle — only with truth. At 90, Shyam Benegal remains a titan of Indian cinema. Not because he made ‘important’ films, but because he made them essential. His stories weren’t about escape; they were about confrontation. He confronted the hypocrisy of feudalism (Ankur), the arrogance of power (Nishant), and the price of ambition (Bhumika). As we celebrate his towering legacy, we revisit the films that defined him — and, in many ways, defined us.
These films are reminders of what cinema can do when it dares to ask questions instead of offering answers. Here’s a list of 12 of Shyam Benegal’s finest films — essential cinema from a man who taught us to look beyond the frame.
1. Ankur (1974): The seed of rebellion, the gaze of oppression: With Ankur, Shyam Benegal struck a nerve. This quiet, simmering tale of a landlord’s exploitation of a Dalit woman is the birth cry of India’s New Wave cinema. Shabana Azmi, in her debut, exudes quiet defiance, while Sadhu Meher’s Lakshmi is the wound we can’t look away from. The final act — a child’s act of rebellion — still echoes.
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2. Nishant (1975): The horror of power, the mechanics of silence: There are no heroes in Nishant — only complicity. The story of a village teacher whose wife is abducted by feudal lords might seem like a simple tale of victimhood, but Benegal reveals how power turns bystanders into accessories. Girish Karnad plays the helpless husband with haunted precision, while the ensemble cast — including Amrish Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, and Anant Nag — offers a masterclass in menace. When the village finally rises, it’s not triumph we feel — it’s the dread of cycles repeating.
3. Manthan (1976): The churning of the village, the birth of a revolution: If cinema had to condense the milk cooperative movement into a pulse, it would be Manthan. Funded by farmers themselves, the film embodies its subject — collective action. Girish Karnad plays the urban development officer entering a village with noble intent, only to be swallowed by its politics. But this is not his story. It belongs to the women who upend the milk monopoly and reclaim their agency. The film’s power isn’t in its message; it’s in the method. Change comes slowly, but it comes.
4. Bhumika (1977): The portrait of a woman as her own author: Benegal’s Bhumika isn’t just about Usha (played with ferocity by Smita Patil); it’s about performance itself. Usha is an actress in a crumbling marriage, but her roles on-screen and off blur. One moment she’s a diva, the next a pawn. Based on the memoir of Marathi actress Hansa Wadkar, the film strips away the glamour of fame, revealing the control, coercion, and gaslighting at its core. Smita Patil erupts in the film. This is not ‘woman as victim’; this is ‘woman as resistance.’
5. Kondura (1978): The curse of faith, the cost of belief: Myth meets modernity in Kondura, where a ‘blessing’ from a mystical sea spirit sets off a chain of events that exposes the rot beneath religious orthodoxy. Anant Nag’s devout priest begins with good intentions but slowly descends into moral blindness. Benegal’s use of magical realism is cutting. The supernatural here offers entrapment. Faith curdles into control, and piety turns into poison.
6. Junoon (1978): Obsession in the time of empire: Based on Ruskin Bond’s A Flight of Pigeons, Junoon captures a moment when history turns into hysteria. Set during the Revolt of 1857, the film centres on Javed Khan (Shashi Kapoor), a Mughal nobleman whose obsession with an English girl (played by Nafisa Ali) mirrors the crumbling of empire itself. Kapoor’s Javed is a man clinging to power and pride even as it slips from his fingers. History, in Benegal’s hands, becomes blood, fever, and fire.
7. Kalyug (1981): The Mahabharata in a boardroom: Corporate warfare is reimagined as an epic in Kalyug, with the Mahabharata’s Kurukshetra transplanted to the ruthless world of business. Shashi Kapoor's Karan is is Karna reborn, a man loyal to power but doomed by it. The boardroom becomes a battlefield where share prices are arrows and hostile takeovers are battles to the death. It’s Benegal’s sharpest critique of capitalism, but it never feels didactic. You don’t watch Kalyug — you get caught in its crossfire.
8. Mandi (1983): The brothel as a microcosm of society: If you think Mandi is a film about prostitutes, you’ve missed the point. The brothel, run by the magnificent Shabana Azmi as Rukmini Bai, becomes a microcosm of every institution — government, media, and morality. The women are seen as ‘impure’ outsiders, yet they possess more humanity than the self-righteous men trying to displace them. Beneath the laughter (and there is much of it) lies a tragedy of displacement, where the marginalised are always asked to ‘make way’ for development.
Also read: Cannes Classics: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur scores a hat-trick with Shyam Benegal’s Manthan
9. Trikal (1985): The haunting of the past, the inheritance of regret: Time isn’t linear in Trikal; it moves like memory — sometimes rushing, sometimes still. Set in post-colonial Goa, the story follows the Fonseca family as they confront the ghosts of their past. Literally. Om Puri’s ‘outsider’ perspective is our entry point, but it’s Leela Naidu’s presence that haunts the film like a phantom. The Portuguese have left, but colonialism’s shadow still lingers. The film, a period drama, feels like a séance.
10. Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (The Seventh Horse of the Sun, 1992): Truth, memory, and the geometry of storytelling: This isn’t a film you watch; it’s a film you unravel. Based on Dharmavir Bharati’s novella, Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda is a story about storytelling itself. Raghuvir Yadav plays Manek Mulla, a narrator recalling three women in his life. But whose story is this? Who is telling it, and why? The nonlinear structure isn’t a gimmick; it’s the only way to capture the slipperiness of memory. Benegal’s quiet genius here is his refusal to offer ‘resolution.’ Life doesn’t resolve. It lingers.
11. Sardari Begum (1996): The voice of a woman, the echo of her choices: Sardari Begum sings with defiance, but it’s the silence after her voice that echoes longest. When she dies, her life is reconstructed like a puzzle, each piece exposing another layer of her struggles. A singer caught between tradition and ambition, Sardari Begum (played by Kirron Kher) isn’t seeking liberation; she’s seeking space. As each friend, relative, and lover remembers her differently, we see how women become stories before they become people.
12. Zubeidaa (2001) The price of desire, the weight of dreams: If every princess fairy tale ended with a ‘Where are they now?’ chapter, it would look like Zubeidaa. A princess (Karisma Kapoor) who craves freedom but is trapped in marriage and patriarchy, Zubeidaa is part muse, part martyr. Benegal, with Khalid Mohamed’s script, builds her life not as a spiral. As Zubeidaa seeks the skies (in her husband’s airplane), the audience knows what she does not — the descent is inevitable.
