Rudaali

Story

Synopsis

Shanichari is a beautiful girl born in lower cast and her life is full of sufferings because of lower cast, poor finances, lost parents, drunken husband, mischievous son. The title refers to a custom in some parts of Rajasthan—where aristocratic women were long kept secluded and veiled—of hiring professional women mourners on the death of a male relative, a rudaali (pronounced “roo-dah-lee”—literally, a female “weeper”) to publicly express the grief that family members, constrained by their high social status, were not permitted to display—or at times, perhaps did not feel. Underwritten by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and Doordarshan (Indian national television) and based on a short story by famed Bengali author Mahasweta Devi—whose tales often focus on the travails of low-caste women.

Director

Kalpana Lajmi

Writers

Gulzar, Kalpana Lajmi, Mahasweta Devi

Language

Hindi

Country

India

Release date

11 January 1993

Ensemble

Cast

• 

  Dimple Kapadia

  Shanichari

• 

  Rakhee Gulzar

  Bhikni

• 

  Raj Babbar

  Thakur

• 

  Raghubir Yadav

  Budhwa

• 

  Sushmita Mukherjee

  Mungri

• 

  Amjad Khan

  Thakur Ramavtar Singh

• 

  Ravi Jhankal

• 

  Suneel Sinha