BFI’s Indian on Film season joins forces with BFI Thriller to screen four contemporary Indian thrillers. 

As part the British Council’s UK-India Year of Culture, the BFI has been celebrating Indian film throughout 2017. 

Co-curated by BFI Head Curator Robin Baker, and writer and programmer Meenakshi Shedde, the BFI’s India on Film programme runs at BFI Southbank until December 2017. 

Talvar (Meghna Gulzar, 2015) is a police procedural based on a real-life double homicide. 

Starring Irrfan Khan and Konkana Sen Sharma, the film is based on the 2008 Noida double murder case, in which a teenage girl and her family servant were found murdered and her parents were convicted for the crime. 

The film is directed by maverick, female filmmaker, Meghna Gulzar, who is currently directing Dharma Productions’ Raazi with Alia Bhatt. 

NH10 (Navdeep Singh, 2015) is a feminist thriller that sees a woman become a killer in self-defence, after she and her partner witness an honour killing. 

The film marked the first production to emerge from experimental production company, Clean Slate Films, which was established by powerhouse of Indian cinema, Anushka Sharma, and her brother, Karnesh Sharma, to pioneer new content for a new India and a global audience. NH10 emerged a sleeper hit, critically lauded and loved by audiences. 

Cult film Sairat (Nagraj Manjule, 2016) is a revenge saga revolving around a caste-based honour killing, which opened at the Berlin Film Festival and went on to break domestic, Marathi box office records as well as becoming the first Marathi film to gross over 100 crore worldwide. 

Completing the line-up is the Tamil, black comedy-crime film Jigarthanda (Karthik Subbaraj, 2014). 

The film is part-meta-gangster flick, part musical and a violent meditation about a filmmaker who becomes a gangster in order to get his film made.