Satyajit Ray's first movie showed what life is like in the middle of India, where modernization hasn't reached yet and where many people still have a hard time with daily tasks, just like Apu's family.
Pyaasa (1957)
The film was Guru Dutt's sad look at the life of a failed artist. It also looked at how some people in society enjoy art when it's popular but don't do anything to support it.
Meghe Dhaka Tara (1960)
The film, which was directed by Ritwik Ghatak, was about a young woman who has been forced to move to West Bengal from an area that is not East Pakistan because of Partition. It showed how hard she works to make sure her family stays alive.
Elippathayam (1982)
The Adoor Gopalakrishnan movie was mostly about how feudalism is falling apart in independent India and how lords are struggling to deal with a new, more equal society.
Nayakan (1987)
This crime drama by Mani Ratnam was based on the real life of Varadarajan Mudaliar and The Godfather (1972). It's about a Tamil gangster in the 1980s.
Hey Ram (2000)
With Kamal Haasan in the lead role and the drama being filmed in both Tamil and Hindi, it looks at the fault lines of Partition and how they have affected modern sectarian politics, causing violence and a general feeling of mistrust.
Kadaisi Vivasayi (2021)
In the movie by M. Manikandan, the police and small-time bureaucracy are compared to a troubled old farmer who is the only person in his village still working as a farmer.