Genre 
A fictional account, inspired by true events and people, of India’s first gold medal win as an independent nation at the 1948 Olympics in London. Tapan Das (Akshay Kumar), the team manager, leads the charge to assemble the country’s first all-Indian hockey team. His aim is to beat the Britishers at their own game, on their own turf.
Tag Archives: independence.
Begum Jaan
Begum Jaan transports us to the communally-charged time of the Partition, and the ‘butchering’ of India into two parts. The film tells the story of a brothel which lies right in the middle of the proposed Radcliffe line. When two officials, one from the Indian National Congress (Ashish Vidyarthi) and another from the All-India Muslim League (Rajit Kapoor), tell the madam of the brothel, Begum Jaan (Vidya Balan), that she has to vacate, she is defiant and determined that nothing can displace her and her girls from their home.
Begum has full faith in the Raja (Naseeruddin Shah), whose patronage she enjoys, but her hopes are eventually dashed when he tells her the reduced authority of royalty in the new, democratic India. Begum Jaan also subtly shows the ‘what if’ side of the Partition. What if men had taken up arms and refused to be divided on the parochial basis of religion?
Dil se
In this story of the clash between love and ideology, the focus is on Amarkant Varma, a deceased army officer’s son. As a program executive for All India Radio, he travels all over India to interview citizens to mark the 50th anniversary of Indian independence. On one of his trips, he meets and falls for an intriguing and mysterious woman, whom he finds out is named Meghna, and who seems to enjoy leading him on. He follows her all the way to Ladakh, and after only two days together, she leaves him to join a group of insurgents on a mission. Heartbroken, Amar agrees to marry Preeti, a woman of his mother’s choice. Meanwhile, Meghna is chosen to lead a suicide mission on the Republic Day Parade, and when she runs into Amar again where the mission is to take place, their destinies intertwine.
