Rang De Basanti

A British documentary maker comes to Delhi to film the story of Indian revolutionaries hanged under colonial rule, working from her grandfather's diaries. She casts a group of students who take nothing seriously. They treat the rehearsals as a joke at first. Then a friend of theirs is killed when a poorly maintained military aircraft goes down, and the official account blames the pilot. From there the film lays the history they were rehearsing over their present; the narrative puts the revolutionaries and their own anger in the same frame. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra directed, with Aamir Khan leading. The music is by A. R. Rahman. Before watching: on release the film became associated in India with real protests about air crashes and corruption. It also runs close to three hours, and its second half is far darker than its first.