Samar (film)

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Samar
Directed by	Shyam Benegal
Produced by	Raj Pius
Written by	Ashok Mishra
Starring	Rajeshwari Sachdev Rajit Kapoor Kishore Kadam Ravi Jhankal Seema Biswas
Music by	Vanraj Bhatia
Cinematography	Rajan Kothari
Editing by	Aseem Sinha
Release date(s)	1999
Running time	126 mins
Language	Hindi/Urdu
IMDb profile

Samar (Hindi: समर, Urdu: سمر, translation: Conflict) (1999) is an award-winning Indian feature film directed by Shyam Benegal. It stars Rajeshwari Sachdev, Kishore Kadam and Seema Biswas among others. The film is in Hindi-Urdu. The film's music is composed by Vanraj Bhatia. It won the Golden Lotus Award for Best Film at the National Film Awards in 1999.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film is centred around India's caste system. In a small village in Madhya Pradesh, two different communities fight over a water pump installation. When a member of one of the communities, Nathu (Kishore Kadam) decides to protest against a decision he feels is unjust, he angers the local land owner, who decides to impose economic sanctions on the community in an effort to starve them out of the village. When Nathu's house is burned down in mysterious circumstances, Nathu seeks the comfort of a temple, and prays for a solution. Instead he finds himself abused and beaten the land owner for breaking a rule that bans members of Nathu's community from entering the temple. It later emerges that the situation in the area is being used as a plot for a film made in Bombay, however characters featured in the film are misrepresented, which leads to tension on the set and eventually violence spills.