Court

[projekktor id=’20584′]

Court is a courtroom drama written and directed by Indian filmmaker Chaitanya Tamhane. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won Best Film in the Horizons programme. The film stars Vira Sathidar, Vivek Gomber, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Pradeep Joshi, Usha Bane, and Shirish Pawar.

A sewage worker’s dead body is found inside a manhole in Mumbai. An ageing folk singer is arrested and accused of performing an inflammatory song, which may have incited the worker to commit suicide. The trial unfolds in a lower court, where the hopes and dreams of the city’s ordinary people play out. Forging these fates are the lawyers and judge, who are observed in their personal lives beyond the theatre of the courtroom.

“I was surprised by my urge to explore the Indian judiciary,” Tamhane says of his film’s subject matter. “After all, so much has been done and said in the genre of courtroom dramas. But when I attended a nondescript lower court in suburban Mumbai, the sheer lack of drama, and the casualness with which life and death decisions were being made, was what sparked my imagination. Amidst all this theatre, are the hopes and fears of ordinary people, who cling on to every word they can understand, as their fates are decided.”

Court is rated G.