Come, question your faith...

Dharm, Bhavna Talwer's insightful directorial debut, is one of those thought-provoking films that touch the core of your being. With brilliant cinematography, haunting and meditative background score and Pankaj Kapur's superb performance, it is a film that deserves to be seen by every lover of cinema.

Set against the backdrop of the holy city of Benaras and the river Ganges, Dharm takes the viewer on a journey of spirituality and the Brahmanical way of life. It deals with a familiar topic of misinterpretation and abuse of religious beliefs, by unscrupulous elements who mould it to suit their interests, from those who have turned it into a business to those who purportedly claim to protect and purify it while inciting violence, cruelty and inhumanity against members of other faiths. While the violence scenes at times seem amateurish and the treatment of Hindu-Muslim conflict leaves much to be desired, this is above all a personal story of inner journey, a Hindu priest's transition from an idealized scholar to a human being with common decency.

Although it received immense appreciation at the Cannes Film Festival and is considered by a number of critics to be the best film to come out of India in 2007, it was not chosen as India's official entry for the Academy Awards (it came a close second in a controversial selection process) which will unfortunately not help bring it to a wider audience in the US.

If all you know of India's cinema is standard Bollywood fare, you owe it to yourself to see this film.