Dharmputra (1961)

Earth

It's 1947 and the borderlines between India and Pakistan are being drawn. A young girl bears witnesses to tragedy as her ayah is caught between the love of two men and the rising tide of political and religious violence.

Gosford Park

In 1930s England, a group of pretentious rich and famous gather together for a weekend of relaxation at a hunting resort. But when a murder occurs, each one of these interesting characters becomes a suspect.

The Four Feathers

A young British officer resigns his post when he learns of his regiment's plan to ship out to the Sudan for the conflict with the Mahdi. His friends and fiancée send him four white feathers as symbols of what they view as his cowardice. To redeem his honor, he disguises himself as an Arab and secretly saves their lives.

Gandhi

In the early years of the 20th century, Mohandas K. Gandhi, a British-trained lawyer, forsakes all worldly possessions to take up the cause of Indian independence. Faced with armed resistance from the British government, Gandhi adopts a policy of 'passive resistance', endeavouring to win freedom for his people without resorting to bloodshed.

The Long Goodbye

A short about racism and Islamophobia in the UK.

Lawrence of Arabia

The story of British officer T.E. Lawrence's mission to aid the Arab tribes in their revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Lawrence becomes a flamboyant, messianic figure in the cause of Arab unity but his psychological instability threatens to undermine his achievements.

The Man Who Would Be King

A robust adventure about two British adventurers who take over primitive Kafiristan as "godlike" rulers, meeting a tragic end through their desire for a native girl. Based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.

The Four Feathers

A disgraced officer risks his life to help his childhood friends in battle.

Vanity Fair

Beautiful, funny, passionate, and calculating, Becky is the orphaned daughter of a starving English artist and a French chorus girl. She yearns for a more glamorous life than her birthright promises and resolves to conquer English society by any means possible. A mere ascension into the heights of society is simply not enough. So Becky finds a patron in the powerful Marquess of Steyne whose whims enable Becky to realise her dreams. But is the ultimate cost too high for her?

Zulu Dawn

In 1879, the British suffer a great loss at the Battle of Isandlwana due to incompetent leadership.

Gallipoli

As World War I rages, brave and youthful Australians Archy and Frank—both agile runners—become friends and enlist in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps together. They later find themselves part of the Dardanelles Campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, a brutal eight-month conflict which pit the British and their allies against the Ottoman Empire and left over 500,000 men dead.

Jodhaa Akbar

A sixteenth century love story about a marriage of alliance that gave birth to true love between a Mughal emperor and a Rajput princess.

if....

In an English boys' boarding school, social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. Three Lower Sixth students, Wallace, Johnny and leader Mick Travis decide on a shocking course of action to redress the balance of privilege once and for all.

Zulu

In 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War, man-of-the-people Lt. Chard and snooty Lt. Bromhead are in charge of defending the isolated and vastly outnumbered Natal outpost of Rorke's Drift from tribal hordes.

OFF DUTY

It's an ordinary winter's day when disillusioned Police Inspector Azaad Singh is tasked with delivering a very important file to his superior. Traversing expanses of rural and urban Punjab along the way, he reckons with the state's past and present realities, and faces an untimely existential crisis as a result.

Tamas

Set in the backdrop of riot-stricken Pakistan at the time of the partition of India in 1947, the film deals with the plight of emigrant Sikh and Hindu families to India as a consequence of the partition.

RRR

A fictional history of two legendary revolutionaries' journey away from home before they began fighting for their country in the 1920s.

Mountains of the Moon

The story of Captain Richard Francis Burton's and Lt. John Hanning Speke's expedition to find the source of the Nile river in the name of Queen Victoria's British Empire. The film tells the story of their meeting, their friendship emerging amidst hardship, and then dissolving after their journey.

Business as Usual - Der Prophet fliegt mit

Plot unavailable

Striker

Amidst strictly enforced curfew by Bombay Police during December 1992 following Hindu-Muslim riots, Suryakant - one of four siblings from Malad's Malvani slums, heads home.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

General Candy, who's overseeing an English squad in 1943, is a veteran leader who doesn't have the respect of the men he's training and is considered out-of-touch with what's needed to win the war. But it wasn't always this way. Flashing back to his early career in the Boer War and World War I, we see a dashing young officer whose life has been shaped by three different women, and by a lasting friendship with a German soldier.

Road to Sangam

Hasmat, a devout Muslim, is asked to repair a vehicle that transported the ashes of Mahatma Gandhi. However, the situation soon complicates when his community is shaken by violence.

Winston Churchill: A Giant in the Century

A new look at the public and private life of one of the most important statesmen in the history of Europe: Winston Churchill (1874-1965), soldier, politician, writer, painter, leader of his country in the darkest hours, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a myth, a giant of the 20th century.

Khartoum

English General Charles George Gordon is appointed military governor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by the Prime Minister. Ordered to evacuate Egyptians from the Sudan, Gordon stays on to protect the people of Khartoum, who are under threat of being conquered by a Muslim army.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

In 1853, as the British and Russian empires compete to gain and maintain their place in the dreadful Great Game of political intrigues and alliances whose greatest prize is the domination of India and the border territories, Major Geoffrey Vickers must endure several betrayals and misfortunes before he can achieve his revenge at the Balaclava Heights, on October 25, 1854, the most glorious day of the Crimean War.

The Charge of the Light Brigade

During the Crimean War between Britain and Russia in the 1850s, a British cavalry division, led by the overbearing Lord Cardigan, engages in an infamously reckless strategic debacle against a Russian artillery battery.

Guns at Batasi

An anachronistic martinet RSM on a remote Colonial African army caught in a local coup d'etat must use his experience to defend those in his care.

North West Frontier

In the rebellious northern frontier province of colonial India, British Army Captain Scott, a young prince and the boy's governess escape by an obsolete train as they are relentlessly pursued by Muslim rebels intent on assassinating the prince.

PK

A stranger in the city asks questions no one has asked before. Known only by his initials, the man's innocent questions and childlike curiosity take him on a journey of love, laughter and letting go.

Beyond the Pale

Mr. Whicher is hired by former Home Secretary Sir Edward Shore to investigate the violent threats made against his son Charles, who has recently returned from India with his family.

Dert Bende

The love lives of two sisters who are in love with the same man are intertwined. And when one of them decisively decides to get married, things get really complicated.

Unconquered

England, 1763. After being convicted of a crime, the young and beautiful Abigail Hale agrees, to escape the gallows, to serve fourteen years as a slave in the colony of Virginia, whose inhabitants begin to hear and fear the sinister song of the threatening drums of war that resound in the wild Ohio valley.

The Four Feathers

An Englishman (Richard Arlen) fights in the Sudan after receiving white feathers of cowardice from his fiancee (Fay Wray) and friends.

Sins in the Family

Zara lives an idyllic life with husband Max and their adopted daughter Rose in their historic Rhode Island home. But when school councilor Carly gets strangely close to her daughter and puts Zara on edge, she confesses she is Rose’s birth mum. With Rose in danger and Zara’s perfect life starting to crumble around her, will she find out the truth about Carly before it’s too late?

Kim

During the British Raj, the orphan of a British soldier poses as a Hindu and is torn between his loyalty to a Buddhist mystic and aiding the English secret service.

Iyobinte Pusthakam

Set in the backdrop of the picturesque Munnar, it tells the story of Iyob, a slave-turned-master.

Mogul Mowgli

Zed, a young British rapper, is about to start his first world tour, when a crippling illness strikes him down, and he is forced to move back in with his family. He tries to find himself between an international music career and Pakistani family traditions.

Train to Pakistan

Tensions run high near the border of British India, which is about to be partitioned with a new country called Pakistan. Sikhs living in this border town have heard numerous stories of Muslims killing, raping, and looting other Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians, and many of whom are their friends and relatives. Enraged at the loss of law and order, they plan their own attack on a trainful of Muslims leaving British India. The train is overcrowded with tens and thousands of migrating passengers, who are even perched on the windows and seated on the roof of this train. The plot is to tear the bridge down when the train is on it, and no one will dare stop these men to carry out this horrific task

2018 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action

The year’s most spectacular Live Action short films.

Garm Hava

In post-Partition India, a Muslim businessman and his family struggle for their rights in a country which was once their own.

Karmouz War

Alexandria, Egypt, 1940. Three young Egyptians come to the aid of a woman being attacked by three British soldiers. One of them is arrested and thrown in jail. When the military surrounds the police station and begins an all-out assault, it's up to one man, Gen. Youssef al-Masri, to defend his prison and protect his people.

The Black Watch

Captain Donald King is sent to India to carry out a secret mission while the Black Watch, his regiment, leaves for France at the outbreak of the First World War.

India on Film: 1899 – 1947

As part of the 2017 UK-India Year of Culture, the British Council and British Film Institute share a unique collection of films documenting the sights and culture of a bygone India. Filmed between 1899-1947, and preserved in the BFI National Archive since then, these rare films capture many glimpses of life in India, from dances and markets, to hunts and pageantry.

A River Called Titas

An in-depth look at the lives and struggles of a fishing community living by the River Titas in Bangladesh after the Partition of India in 1947.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Jack Sparrow, a freewheeling 18th-century pirate, quarrels with a rival pirate bent on pillaging Port Royal. When the governor's daughter is kidnapped, Sparrow decides to help the girl's love save her.

Robinson Charley

No man is an island, but Charley represents his nation in this economical cartoon tale of Britain’s economics.

A Night of Knowing Nothing

L, a university student in India, writes letters to her estranged lover, while he is away. Through these letters, we get a glimpse into the drastic changes taking place around her. Merging reality with fiction, dreams, memories, fantasies and anxieties, an amorphous narrative unfolds.

Project A

In late 19th Century Hong Kong the British may rule the land, but the pirates rule the waters. One Coast Guard officer is Dragon Ma, who is determined that his beloved Coast Guard will not be made a fool of.

Robert Newman's History of Oil

Stand-up comedian Robert Newman gets to grips with the wars and politics of the last hundred years, from WWI through to the 2003 invasion of Iraq; but rather than adhering to the history we were fed at school, this show places oil centre stage as the cause of all commotion. This innovative history programme is based around Robert Newman's stand-up act and supported by resourceful archive sequences and stills with satirical impersonations of historical figures from Mayan priests to Archduke Ferdinand.

The Twinning Reaction

An astounding exposé that gives voice to the unwitting subjects of an infamous American scientific experiment: the 1960s Neubauer-Bernard study of separated twins. Told from the perspective of the Jewish identical twins and triplets who were secretly split up in infancy and adopted through Louise Wise Services, a Jewish adoption agency, the documentary examines the traumatic, long-term effects of the separations — and continuing deception — on the children and their adoptive families.

Water

A British diplomat to a West Indian island nation finds his idyllic existence thrown into chaos when a large American drilling company finds a huge source of natural mineral water there.

Carry On Up the Khyber

Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond looks after the British outpost near the Khybar pass. Protected by the kilted Third Foot and Mouth regiment, you would think they were safe, but the Khazi of Kalabar has other ideas—he wants all the British dead. But his troops fear the 'skirted-devils, who are rumoured not to wear any underwear.

Oh! What a Lovely War

The working-class Smiths change their initially sunny views on World War I after the three boys of the family witness the harsh reality of trench warfare.

Dancing with Le Pen

In France’s last presidential election, Marine Le Pen, a right-wing candidate, won over 30 per cent of the vote after an attempt to rebrand a party long associated with her controversial father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. See how three of her supporters faced similar obstacles in changing the narrative.

Mosques - Behind the Veil

With the help of hidden camera, Danish TV 2 documents how a known Danish imam teaches Muslim women about Islam's violent rules of adultery.

Gunga Din

British army sergeants Ballantine, Cutter and MacChesney serve in India during the 1880s, along with their native water-bearer, Gunga Din. While completing a dangerous telegraph-repair mission, they unearth evidence of the suppressed Thuggee cult. When Gunga Din tells the sergeants about a secret temple made of gold, the fortune-hunting Cutter is captured by the Thuggees, and it's up to his friends to rescue him.

La bombe

Plot unavailable

The Drum

Set in the India of the British Raj, the evil and untrustworthy Prince Guhl (Raymond Massey) plans to wipe out the British troops as they enjoy the hospitality of Guhl's spacious palace. It's up to the loyal young Prince Azim (Sabu) to warn the troops of Guhl's treachery by tapping out a message on his drum.

Divide and Rule - Never!

This punk-infused documentary by the Newsreel Collective invites young working class Londoners to discuss their experiences of racism. First and second generation Black and Asian immigrants, as well as ex-National Front members, paint a detailed picture of discrimination in 1970s Britain. The film uses lo-fi animation, archive footage and a pulsating soundtrack to compare racial inequality in London to Britain's colonial 'divide and rule' policy, European fascism and the rise of Nazi Germany.

Whoops Apocalypse

When a small British owned island in the Caribbean is invaded and the world's most dangerous terrorist kidnaps a member of the Royal family, the countdown to World War 3 begins. If anyone can prevent the oncoming apocalypse it's the American President, but her closest ally the British Prime Minister appears to have gone stark raving mad.

Lahore - Refugees from India

Millions of Muslims flee to Lahore in the newly created state of Pakistan, prompted by the partition of British India.