14 Films & TV Shows Set In India During The 1930s
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Gold
🇮🇳 India England 🇩🇪 Germany The 1940s The 1930sThe Dream That United Our Nation — Set in 1948, the historic story of India's first Olympic medal post their independence.
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Ishti
🇮🇳 India The 1930s The 1920sThe film focuses on a very conservative Namboodiri family in a very regressive social milieu. Ishti centres around two main characters, a 70-year-old Ramavikraman Namboodiri, who is a Vedic scholar who preserves the fire from a Somayagam to light his funeral pyre, and Sreedevi, his young, third wife. Sreedevi stands up against orthodoxy. She manages to inspire her husband’s son from another marriage to read and write. The conflict between these characters and those who revolve around their lives is what the film is generally about. It then also becomes a strong comment on the attempt to balance worldly desires and the rigidity of caste and tradition.
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The Way Back
🇵🇱 Poland 🇷🇺 Russia 🇮🇳 India 🇨🇳 China 🇲🇳 Mongolia The 1980s The 1940s The 1930sTheir escape was just the beginning. — At the dawn of WWII, several men escape from a Russian gulag—to take a perilous and uncertain journey to freedom as they cross deserts, mountains and several nations.
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
New York Louisiana Florida 🇫🇷 France 🇷🇺 Russia 🇮🇳 India The 1970s The 1980s The 1990s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 2000sLife isn't measured in minutes, but in moments. — I was born under unusual circumstances. And so begins. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: a man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time. We follow his story, set in New Orleans, from the end of World War I in 1918 into the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man's life can be. Directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett with Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Julia Ormond, Benjamin Button, is a grand tale of a not-so-ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.
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Water
🇮🇳 India The 1930sFor Five Years, Extremist Groups Waged A Campaign of Death Threats, Arson and Riots To Stop The Production of "Water." But The Filmmakers Were Not To Be Silenced. — The year is 1938, and Mahatma Gandhi's groundbreaking philosophies are sweeping across India, but 8-year-old Chuyia, newly widowed, must go to live with other outcast widows on an ashram. Her presence transforms the ashram as she befriends two of her compatriots.
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Kundun
🇮🇳 India Tibet The 1930s The 1940s The 1950sThe destiny of a people lies in the heart of a boy. — The Tibetans refer to the Dalai Lama as 'Kundun', which means 'The Presence'. He was forced to escape from his native home, Tibet, when communist China invaded and enforced an oppressive regime upon the peaceful nation. The Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959 and has been living in exile in Dharamsala ever since.
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The Bengali Night
🇮🇳 India The 1930sAllan (Hugh Grant) is an engineer working in 1930s Calcutta. He is invited to stay with the family of his boss, Narendra Sen (Soumitra Chatterjee) which includes his wife, Indira (Shabana Azmi) and daughter Gayatri (Supriya Pathak). Gayatri and Allan become romantically involved leading to tragedy.
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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Shanghai 🇮🇳 India The 1930sIf adventure has a name... it must be Indiana Jones. — After arriving in India, Indiana Jones is asked by a desperate village to find a mystical stone. He agrees – and stumbles upon a secret cult plotting a terrible plan in the catacombs of an ancient palace.
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The Razor's Edge
🇫🇷 France 🇮🇳 India The 1930s The 1920s The 1910sThe story of one man's search for himself. — He had everything and wanted nothing. He learned that he had nothing and wanted everything. He saved the world and then it shattered. The path to enlightenment is as sharp and narrow as a razor's edge.
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Gandhi
England 🇮🇳 India 🇿🇦 South Africa The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910s The 1900s The 1890sHis triumph changed the world forever. — In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.
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India Song
🇮🇳 India The 1930sIndia, 1937. Anne-Marie Stretter is the wife of the French ambassador and leads a solitary yet privileged life in Calcutta. The tedium of her existence is relieved by numerous illicit love affairs with government officials, young men who find her an object of desire and fascination. The Vice Consul is driven insane by his love for her and, expelled from the ambassador’s palace, cries like a sick animal. Life continues for Anne-Marie Stretter, the same tedious existence…
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Under the Blue Sky
🇮🇳 India The 1930sSet in the turbulent 1930s, this is the story of a poor Chinese hawker selling his merchandise, Chinese silk, in the streets of Calcutta. This was the time when China was repulsing a brutal attack of militarist Japan and when an outraged Rabindranath Tagore wrote to his friend in Japan, the great poet Noguchi: “I wish your countrymen, whom I love so much, not success but remorse”. This film holds the dubious distinction of being the first to be banned (though temporarily) in independent India.
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Black Narcissus
🇮🇳 India The 1930sA story of exquisite yearning in a strange and beautiful land. Towering over the screen ... as the mountains that saw it happen. — A group of Anglican nuns, led by Sister Clodagh, are sent to a mountain in the Himalayas. The climate in the region is hostile and the nuns are housed in an odd old palace. They work to establish a school and a hospital, but slowly their focus shifts. Sister Ruth falls for a government worker, Mr. Dean, and begins to question her vow of celibacy. As Sister Ruth obsesses over Mr. Dean, Sister Clodagh becomes immersed in her own memories of love.
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They Met in Bombay
🇮🇳 India 🇭🇰 Hong Kong 🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sStealing jewels for profit . . . and hearts for pleasure! — A jewel thief and a con artist are rivals in the theft of a valuable gem as the Japanese army invades China.
