US Premier
Digitally Restored Version! Special thanks to NFDC for making this screening possible.

Set in the picturesque town of Ajmer, Rajasthan, Kamal Swaroop’s film is a cult classic with feminist overtones, and a colorful cast of characters including a young boy who can hold his breath, a runaway Bollywood actress with a shady past, a merchant who believes he can defecate diamonds, and a gang of terrorist tadpoles. Touted as “the great Indian LSD trip,” the film premiered to rave reviews at the Berlin Film Festival in 1988, and has since then achieved mythological status in India, influencing a whole generation of filmmakers. Swaroop draws irreverently from mythology, politics, philosophy and popular culture to create a genre-defying film that one critic hailed as “the antithesis to what is globally considered Indian cinema.”