We might hate our Indian Film Industry for all the stereotypes, sexist, and misogynist content it has been feeding us over the years but there have always been some master pieces in the haystack. Once a year, Bollywood creates a gem which becomes food for our soul. This year, Newton has done the same to us and made us think about how easy or difficult is to be a perfect civilian in any country.
We take a look back at 30 such movies which kept us sane by letting our brains work.
List Of 30 Offbeat Bollywood Movies
1. NEWTON
Writer: Amit Masurkar and Mayank Tewari
Director: Amit Masurkar
Starring: Rajkumar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi
Synopsis: A government clerk takes on the challenge to conduct a fair election in the midst of Central India, fighting with the security forces and the looming fear of guerrilla attacks by communist rebels.
2. PINK
Writer: Soojit Sircar, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Starring: Tapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Amitabh Bachchan
Synopsis: When three young women are implicated in a crime, a retired lawyer steps forward to help clear their names.
3. PARCHED
Writer: Supratik Sen and Leena Yadav
Director: Leena Yadav
Starring: Tannishtha Chatterjee, Radhika Apte
Synopsis: Amidst the stringent landscape of Rajasthan, four women explore their way through personal and cultural difficulties.
4. AANKHON DEKHI
Writer: Rajat Kapoor
Director: Rajat Kapoor
Starring: Sanjay Mishra, Seema Pahva, Rajat Kapoor
Synopsis: Journey of an old man who, after an incident, decides to believe only things that he sees with his eyes.
5. FIRE
Writer: Deepa Mehta
Director: Deepa Mehta
Starring: Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das
Synopsis: — When two brothers choose celibacy and mistress over their wives, their wives form an intimate passionate relationship amidst a close minded society.
6. JAANE BHI DO YAARO
Writer: Soojit Sircar, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Director: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Starring: Tapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Amitabh Bachchan
Synopsis: Two struggling photographers open their own photo studio, looking for a first break, fall into a political scenario of corruption and murder and fight to serve justice to the guilty.
7. NIL BATTEY SANNATA
Writer: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Director: Nitesh Tiwari, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Starring: Swara Bhaskar, Ratna Pathak Shah, Pankaj Tripathi
Synopsis: A story about a single woman and dreams of her daughter.
8. STANLEY KA DABBA
Writer: Amole Gupte
Director: Amole Gupte
Starring: Partho Gupte, Numaan Sheikh
Synopsis: A school teacher, who pushes kids to bring their own lunchbox, forbids one of them to enter his class unless he brought his own lunchbox.
9.THE LUNCHBOX
Writer: Ritesh Batra and Vasan Bala
Director: Ritesh Batra
Starring: Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Synopsis: An accidental lunchbox delivery connects a young housewife with an elder man in the dusk of his life as they build a fantasy world together through the notes.
10. UDAAN
Writer: Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Kashyap
Director: Vikramaditya Motwane
Starring: Rajat Barmecha, Ronit Roy
Synopsis: After getting expelled from school, a teenage boy returns home to his abusive father.
11. MATRUBHOOMI: A NATION WITHOUT WOMEN
Writer: Manish Jha
Director: Manish Jha
Starring: Tulip Joshi, Sudhir Pandey, Sushant Singh
Synopsis: A disturbing saga about male chauvinism and mistreatment of women in India.
12. SWADES
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Writer: M. G. Sathya, Ashutosh Gowarikar
Director: Ashutosh Gowarikar
Starring: Shahrukh Khan, Gayatri Joshi
Synopsis: An Indian scientist from NASA returns to an Indian village to take his nanny to America, but in the process, he rediscovers his roots underneath.
13. SHIP OF THESEUS
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Writer: Anand Gandhi
Director: Anand Gandhi
Starring: Aida Elkashef, Yogesh Shah, Faraz Khan
Synopsis: Ship of Theseus explores questions of identity, justice, beauty, meaning and death through an experimental photographer, an ailing monk and a young stockbroker.
14. THE BLUE UMBRELLA
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Writer: Based on a novel by Ruskin Bond, Minty Kunwar Tejpal
Director: Vishal Bhardwaj
Starring: Pankaj Kapur, Shreya Sharma, Deepak Dobriyal
Synopsis: When three young women are implicated in a crime, a retired lawyer steps forward to help clear their names.
15. MASAAN
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Writer: Varun Grover
Director: Neeraj Ghaywan
Starring: Richa Chadha, Sanjay Mishra, Vicky Kaushal, Pankaj Tripathi
Synopsis: Four Lives intersect along the Ganges: a low caste boy hopelessly in love, a daughter ridden with guilt of a sexual encounter ending in a tragedy, a hapless father with fading morality, and a spirited child yearning for a family, long to escape the moral constructs of a small-town.
16. BRAHMAN NAMAN
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Writer: Naman Ramchandran
Director: Qaushiq Mukherjee
Starring: Shashank Arora, Tanmay Dhanania, Sid Mallya, Biswa Kalyan Rath
Synopsis: A champion college quizzing team try to win the all-India finals and lose their virginities.
17. ALIGARH
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Writer: Apurva Asrani
Director: Hansal Mehta
Starring: Sukhesh Arora, Manoj Bajpai, Balaji Gauri
Synopsis: A true story of Dr. Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, who was suspended from his job because of his sexual orientation.
18. GOUR HARI DASTAAN: THE FREEDOM FILE
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Writer: Surendran
Director: Ananth Narayan Mahadevan
Starring: Vinay Pathak, Konkona Sen Sharma, Ranvir Shorey, Tannishtha Chatterjee
Synopsis: Gour Hari Das, a freedom fighter who works in Khadi Kraft and lives along with his wife & son, lives in a content life in his neighbourhood. However, one day when his son is unable to secure college admission for lack of a Freedom Fighter’s Certificate, he feels the need to establish his identity. In the quest for this piece of paper to prove his authenticity to his son, his neighbours & to the world, he begins a journey that sucks up almost his entire life.
19. RANG RASIYA
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Writer: Sanjeev Dutta, Ketan Mehta
Director: Ketan Mehta
Starring: Randeep Hooda, Nandana Sen, Paresh Rawal, Ashish Vidyarthi
Synopsis: A look into the life of 19th century Indian painter Raja Ravi Varma.
20. DHANAK
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Writer: Nagesh Kukunoor
Director: Nagesh Kukunoor
Starring: Krissh Chhabria, Hetal Gada, Vipin Sharma
Synopsis: Believing actor and goodwill ambassador Shah Rukh Khan can help her brother get an operation to restore his sight, a 10-year old girl takes her blind 8-year old brother on a trek across Rajasthan in search of the Superstar.
21. DO DOONI CHAAR
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Writer: Habib Faisal, Rahil Qazi
Director: Habib Faisal
Starring: Rishi Kapoor, Neetu Singh
Synopsis: A middle class family in India tries to buy a new car.
22. KHOSLA KA GHOSLA
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Writer: Jaideep Sahni
Director: Dibakar Banerjee
Starring: Anupam Kher, Boman Irani, Parvin Davas, Tara Sharma
Synopsis: A Delhi based retired middle class man tries half-heartedly to get his land back from a swindling property dealer with the help of his sons and their friends.
23. FILMISTAAN
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Writer: Nitin Kakkar
Director: Nitin Kakkar
Starring: Sharib Hashmi, Inaamulhaq, Kumud Mishra
Synopsis: A struggling actor from India accidentally ends up in Pakistan.
24. MARGARITA WITH A STRAW
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Writer: Shonali Bose, Nilesh Maniyar
Director: Shonali Bose, Nilesh Maniyar
Starring: Kalki Koechlin, Revathy, Sayani Gupta
Synopsis: A rebellious young woman with a cerebral palsy leaves her home in India to study in New York, unexpectedly falls in love, and embarks on an exhilarating journey of self-discovery.
25. TRAPPED
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Writer: Amit Joshi and Hardik Mehta
Director: Vikramaditya Motwane
Starring: Rajkumar Rao
Synopsis: A man gets stuck in an empty high rise without food, water or electricity.
26. HINDI MEDIUM
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Writer: Saket Chaudhary, Zeenat Lakhani
Director: Saket Chaudhary
Starring: Irrfan Khan, Saba Qamar, Neha Dhupiya, Deepak Dobriyal
Synopsis: A couple from Chandni Chowk, Delhi aspire to give their daughter the best education and thus be a part of and accepted by the elites of Delhi.
27. CITYLIGHTS
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Writer: Sean Ellis and Ritesh Shah
Director: Hansal Mehta
Starring: Rajkumar Rao, Malhar Goenka, Manav Kaul
Synopsis: Deepak Sing is a farmer in Rajasthan. After a tragedy, he migrates to Mumbai with his wife and child to lead a better life. However, upon arriving, he soon discovers the challenges of life in a big city.
28. LIPSTICK UNDER BY BURKHA
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Writer: Gazal Dhaliwal, Suhani Kanwar
Director: Alankrita Shrivastava
Starring: Aahana Kumra, Ratna Pathak Shah, Konkona Sen Sharma
Synopsis: Set in the crowded by-lanes of small town India, Lipstick Under My Burkha chronicles the secret lives of four women in search of a little freedom. Though stifled and trapped in their worlds, these four women claim their desires through small acts of courage and stealthy rebellion.
29. DUM LAGA KE HAISHA
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Writer: Sharat Katariya
Director: Sharat Katariya
Starring: Bhumi Pednekar, Ayushmann Khurrana, Sanjay Mishra, Seema Pahwa
Synopsis: Prem and his oversized wife Sandhya are supposed to spend a lifetime together. Will a regular arranged marriage turn out to be a perfect mismatch?
30. BLACK
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Writer: Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Bhavani Iyer
Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Starring: Amitabh Bachchan, Rani Mukherji, Shernaz Patel
Synopsis: The cathartic tale of a young woman who can’t see, hear or talk and the teacher who brings a ray of light in her blackness.
