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Salaam Bombay! (1988)
Synopsis
Shot on-location on
the streets of Bombay, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay is the gritty tale of Krishna
(Shafiq Syed, a runaway discovered by Nair), a boy kicked out of his home, and
abandoned by the traveling circus he had joined.
In desperation, he uses
the little money he has to buy a one-way ticket to the nearest city, which turns
out to be Bombay.
“Come
back a movie star,” the ticket agent tells him mockingly. In Bombay, Krishna
joins a small community of street kids, and gets a job delivering tea.
Soon, everyone in the downtrodden neighborhood knows him as “Chaipau”
(tea boy). Krishna wants to save five hundred rupees, enough money to get back
into his mother’s good graces and return home.
Chillum (Raghubir Yadav),
a streetwise young man who deals drugs for the local kingpin, Baba (Nana
Patekar), takes Krishna under his wing. The sly but cruel Baba has a mistress,
Rekha (Aneeta Kanwar), who works as a prostitute.
She has a young
daughter, Manju (Hansa Vithal), who has a crush on Krishna, but Krishna only has
eyes for the girl they call “Sweet Sixteen,” a virginal teenager who is being
forced into prostitution.
Eventually, Baba fires the surly Chillum, and
Krishna finds himself struggling to keep Chillum alive by supporting his drug
habit.
Many of the roles in the film are played by non-actors, including
the street kids, and an actual madame who allowed Nair to film scenes in her
brothel. The Harvard-educated Nair began her filmmaking career working on
documentaries.
Salaam Bombay, her narrative feature debut, won worldwide
critical acclaim, and was awarded the Camera D’Or at Cannes. She and the film’s
screenwriter, Sooni Taraporevala, also collaborated on Mississippi Masala,
starring Denzel Washington. —allmovie guide
Cast: Shafiq Syed, Hansa Vithal,
Chanda Sharma, Anita Kanwar, Nana Patekar, Raghuvir Yadav
Cannes: Caméra d'Or, Audience Award
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About this movie
Title: Salaam Bombay! (1988)
Directed by: Mira Nair
Date of birth: 15 October 1957, Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, India
Writing credits: Mira Nair, Sooni Taraporevala
Music: L. Subramaniam
Year: 1988
Country: France | UK | India
Language: English | Hindi
Color: Color
Runtime: 113 min.
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