Stars: Shafiq Syed, Hansa Vithal, Chanda Sharma, Raghuvir Yadav

Director: Mira Nair

Summary: An eleven year old Indian boy accidentally ends up in Bombay instead of his village and his innocence is exposed to the world of drugs and prostitution... Hindi dialogue with subtitles.

Mira Nair's first feature is an acclaimed drama depicting the desperate lives of homeless children in one of India's poorest cities. Krishna (Shafiq Syed) is a 10-year-old country boy forced to live on his own in the streets of Bombay after his family tosses him out. While he hopes to earn 500 rupees for his mother and return home, the all-consuming job of staying alive quickly makes that dream an unlikely reality. He develops the street-smarts needed to survive in the seedy world of prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves, and other homeless children, but the harrowing experience takes an extremely heavy emotional toll on him. Krishna, however, remains determined to raise the money to return home.

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Meera Nair's Salaam Bombaywas her first film, and one of only three Indian films nominated for an Oscar (the others being Mother Indiaand Lagaan). The deceptively simple documentary style hides a meticulously planned feature in which nothing is left to chance. Real street kids play the leads alongside veteran actors, such as Nana Patekar and Shaukat Azmi, as we follow Chaipau, the urchin who wants to save his 500 rupees to "go home", and his encounters with prostitutes, thugs and drug addicts among whom he finds love and companionship. The story avoids sentimentality by endowing the characters with humanity while never romanticising their plight.

Nair eschews the obvious "city of contrasts" theme, presenting only the view from the street, shooting in real locations of Grant Road and its environs. This is one of the greatest presentations of Bombay to date, comparable across genres to Raghu Rai's photography or Vikram Chandra's fiction.

On the DVD:Salaam Bombayon DVD includes a compelling scene-by-scene commentary, in which Nair discusses the problems of location shooting, training the children and the impact of the film on the lives of so many of its characters. The film is in Hindi with English subtitles. --Rachel Dwyer

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	Hindi
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Directors Commentary
Subtitles:	English
Year:	1988
Release Date:	June 16, 2003
Runtime:	109 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C C D 9588
Label:	Film Four Distributors
Keywords:	General, Wide, Screen, Salaam, Bombay, Drama, Hindi
Genre:	Drama