Arjun: The Warrior Prince

In the kingdom of Hastinapur the five Pandava brothers grow up in the palace of their uncle the king, alongside their Kaurava cousins. Arjun, the third brother, surpasses everyone else at archery, and his teacher gives him more attention than his own son. But rising in the palace turns into rivalry, and the rivalry into a reckoning full of gambling, exile and betrayal. The film follows Arjun's road from childhood to the battle at Kurukshetra. This adaptation of the Mahabharata is one of the first animated features made in India with the backing of a major studio. The narrative follows only Arjun's line rather than the whole epic and keeps divine intervention in the background; the hero here is not flawless but jealous and uncertain. The visual style stands closer to American and Japanese animation than to the Indian miniature tradition. It did not find the audience expected at the domestic box office but was treated as a threshold in animation there.