Court
Fascinating...Court is one of the strongest debut features in years.
Court
Winner of top prizes at the Venice and Mumbai film festivals, Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court is a quietly devastating, absurdist portrait of injustice, caste prejudice, and venal politics in contemporary India. An elderly folk singer and grassroots organizer, dubbed the “people’s poet,” is arrested on a trumped-up charge of inciting a sewage worker to commit suicide. His trial is a ridiculous and harrowing display of institutional incompetence, with endless procedural delays, coached witnesses for the prosecution, and obsessive privileging of arcane colonial law over reason and mercy. What truly distinguishes Court, however, is Tamhane’s brilliant ensemble cast of professional and nonprofessional actors; his affecting mixture of comedy and tragedy; and his naturalist approach to his characters and to Indian society as a whole, rich with complexity and contradiction. —New Directors/New Films
“The film conjures an absurdist nightmare of bureaucratic incompetence, indifference and social inequity.” (Stephen Holden, New York Times)
“The film conjures an absurdist nightmare of bureaucratic incompetence, indifference and social inequity.” (Stephen Holden, New York Times)
Genre
Drama
Runtime
116
Language
Marathi,
Hindi,
English,
Gujarati
Director
Chaitanya Tamhane
Cast
Usha Bane,
Geetanjali Kulkarni,
Vira Sathidar
Awards:
Winner, Luigi De Laurentiis Award, Venice Film Festival
Winner, Venice Horizons Award ~ Best Film, Venice Film Festival
FEATURED REVIEW
Jay Weissberg, Variety
There are courtroom dramas, and then there’s “Court,” Chaitanya Tamhane’s impressive debut, which flays alive India’s justice system while commenting on class, education and access to power. Managing to be both extremely rational and extremely humane, the film works so well thanks to an intelligent ...
Played at
Lumiere Music Hall 8.14.15 - 8.20.15
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