Salaam Bombay (Widescreen Special Edition) [DVD] [DVD]

From director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding), this
"brilliantly achieved, stunning and powerful" (Los Angeles Times) film "burst
onto the Indian cinema scene with the force of a tornado" (Time Out London)!
Winner of the Caméra d'Or at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and nominated for a
Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1989, this riveting look at life on the
hardened streets of Bombay went on to accumulate accolades and awards across
the globe! Forced to leave his family at a very young age, Krishna lives on
the streets with pimps, prostitutes, drug addicts and other homeless children.
He earns very little money but it's more than most delivering tea so he
can return home to his family. But his honest plan is foiled when his hard-
earned money is stolen by his closest friend, forcing Krishna to follow in the
footsteps of so many street children of Bombay by turning to a life of crime.
Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) adds her angry voice to the cinema of
forgotten children in this wrenching drama of an 11-year-old boy (real-life
street kid Shafiq Syed) who heads to the big city and joins a sea of homeless
kids and down-and-out adults scrambling to survive the pitiless streets. The
fantasy of Bollywood dreams hangs just out of reach in posters, movies, and
radio tunes, momentary respites from the hard reality of a world ruled by
brutal pimps and drug dealers. In the tradition of Los Olvidados and Pixote,
former documentarian Nair's feature debut is shot entirely in the slums of
Bombay with a largely nonprofessional cast from the same streets. Though the
drama is at times misty and melodramatic, her clear-eyed look at the mercenary
world around these ultimately fragile forgotten children earned her the Caméra
D'Or at Cannes in 1988. --Sean Axmaker