Mammo is a nickname given to Mehmooda Begum by her sisters. She marries a man from Lahore. After Partition, she and her husband automatically become Pakistan citizens. Although childless, her marriage is a happy one until her husband’s death. Over property matters, Mammo is thrown out of the house by her relatives. She comes to India to stay with her only kin, her sister. Unable to extend her visa, she has to go back – political priorities defeat humanitarian ones!

The story of Samar is based on a true life incident that took place in Kull village, Bundelkhand, Madhya Pradesh in the year 1991. In a small village two different communities fight over a water pump installation. When a member of one of the communities, Nathu decides to protest against a decision he feels is unjust, he angers the local land owner, who decides to impose economic sanctions on the community in an effort to starve them out of the village. When Nathu’s house is burned down in mysterious circumstances, Nathu seeks the comfort of a temple, and prays for a solution. Instead he finds himself abused and beaten the land owner for breaking a rule that bans members of Nathu’s community from entering the temple. When they can bear this no longer, the Nathu and his friends decide to appeal to the law.

Young bachelor, Manik Mulla, a railway mail service employee, stays in an old part of Allahabad. His friends gather in his house to listen to his realistic/ surrealistic/ moralistic stories about women, which lead to polemics-social, political, literary discussions. The film provides an interesting study of how a work of literature is transformed into a film that reflects on multiple aspects of life.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a young England-educated barrister at-law, then practicing in Rajkot in Kathiawad, is invited by an Indian firm in South Africa to handle their law suit. Gandhi had no option but to plunge into a long drawn-out struggle against injustice. The Making of the Mahatma is M.K. Gandhi’s early story of experiments with truth, which gave to mankind a new weapon of liberty, the most civilized and humane. The process of transformation from Gandhi the man, to Gandhi the Mahatma is as exciting as it is thought-provoking.

A story of a young man Riyaz’s quest to recover the memory of his mother Zubeidaa, a mother he never knew. Brought up by his grandmother from the age of three, Riyaz sets about trying to piece together her life from the memories of those who knew her. Extremely talented and beautiful, Zubeidaa is the only daughter of Suleman Seth, a film producer in Mumbai. Zubeidaa’s dreams and aspirations are never on her father’s priority list. Zubeidaa’s happiness falls victim to her father’s completely unjustified domination over her life as he is forcibly getting her married to a boy whom she does not even know properly, leave alone liking him. Her life takes a turn for the better and life a whiff of fresh air, romance makes unexpected entrance in her life in the form of Maharaja Vijayendra Singh. Sparks fl y and both fall head over heels in love but this so-called path of love is not devoid of social thorns.

The Police are called to investigate the death of a woman during a riot in the walled city of Delhi. The woman was killed by a stone thrown by an agitated mob. The woman killed is known in the community as «Sardari Begum», a popular singer and courtesan of her time. The religious nature of the incident and the impending elections combine to attract the media’s attention. When a young reporter covering the funeral Tehzeeb Abbasi discovers her father among the mourners, her curiosity prompts her to investigate further. Then comes the revelation that the singer was in fact her aunt, who was disowned by her family for rebelliously learning music from a concubine. Competition film of the XX MIFF.