Court
Sean Baker Presents... • 1h 56m
Chaitanya Tamhane • 2014 • India
A folk singer must navigate contemporary India's labyrinthine legal system.
By day, Narayan Kamble teaches young children poetry at a local school; in the evenings he performs folk songs at political protests, lamenting the lack of social mobility available to India's lower classes. During one such performance Kamble is removed from the stage and arrested—he has been charged with abetting the suicide of a sewage worker, who was discovered dead in a drainage pipe not long after Kamble performed in his village. The ensuing trial pits the activist lawyer Vinay Vora against the public prosecutor Nutan, revealing a complex and entangled web of police corruption, vestigial colonial law, and procedural pretense.
Chaitanya Tamhane's debut film premiered at Venice, where it won Best Film in Orizzonti. Court is a New York Times Critics' Pick, and was selected as India's official submission to the 88th Academy Awards.
Essay: The Plural Architectures of Chaitanya Tamhane's Court
Up Next in Sean Baker Presents...
-
The Round-Up
Miklós Jancsó • Hungary • 1966 • A hypnotic, dazzling vision of war.
Miklós Jancsó’s most renowned work depicts a prison camp in the aftermath of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution. After the Hapsburg monarc...
-
Workingman's Death
In the Donbass region of Ukraine, coal miners toil far below the surface of the earth, extracting carbon to heat their meager homes, selling anything extra for food. In Kawah Ijen, Indonesia, men scale treacherous mountain paths to the edge of a volcanic crater, where they harvest slabs of sulfu...
-
Whores' Glory
In Bangkok, Thailand, women linger in brightly-lit boxes, awaiting their next client. In the bustling red-light district of Faridpur, Bangladesh, a madam haggles over the price of a teenage girl. In Reynosa, on the Mexican-American border, SUVs drive up and down muddy streets while drug-addled ...
