Ankur

Very moving and powerful look at both the caste system and the treatment of women as objects in rural India, in the early 1950s.

A young woman from the serf class is taken in and slowly seduced by her arrogant, handsome young "master" whose house she keeps. But when she becomes pregnant, and his promised child bride finally becomes old enough to join him in the house, our heroine is slowly, painfully pushed aside and locked out.

The film is occasionally heavy handed in its politics, but the truth behind the story makes the slightly agit-prop nature forgivable.

This has none of the singing, dancing and theatrics we have come to associate with modern Indian cinema. This hearkens back to the stark, quiet realism of Satyajit Ray, with complex characters and surprising subtlety.