Manto

Nandita Das's 2018 film takes the hardest years in the life of Saadat Hasan Manto, one of Urdu literature's most contested writers. In Bombay his stories are read and he is known; but as partition approaches and sectarian violence spreads, Manto chooses to leave the city he loves for Lahore. There he finds neither his friends nor anyone willing to publish him. The film sets five of his own stories inside the line of his life and puts the obscenity prosecutions at the centre; Manto was tried on that charge six times. Nawazuddin Siddiqui's performance is what carries it. It screened at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. The argument running underneath, about censorship and what a writer owes, lifts it out of period biography. Who it's for: viewers who want literary biography and South Asian history around partition. Who it's not for: anyone after a fast-moving story; the film puts its weight on atmosphere and text.