Dhare Aalua (1984)

A courageous low-budget feature by Saghir Ahmed who teaches script writing at the FTII. The film addresses questions of rural oppression in ways markedly different from its usual treatment in Oriya cinema (cf. Manmohan Mahapatra). A joint family is partially fragmented when the patriarch’s only son (Mishra), a political activist, has to spend much of his time avoiding the police. The family informally adopts two children and is then blamed when one of them commits suicide while escaping from Panchanan (Ghosh), the children’s oppressive legal guardian. The children’s mostly absent journalist father (Mahapatra) causes the activist to be arrested, but eventually all the players of the drama come together. The director’s daughter Amrita Ahmed played one of the two children.