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Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) adds her angry voice to the cinema of forgotten children in this wrenching drama of an 11-year-old boy (real-life street kid Shafiq Syed) who heads to the big city and joins a sea of homeless kids and down-and-out adults scrambling to survive the pitiless streets. The fantasy of Bollywood dreams hangs just out of reach in posters, movies, and radio tunes, momentary respites from the hard reality of a world ruled by brutal pimps and drug dealers. In the tradition of Los Olvidados and Pixote, former documentarian Nair’s feature debut is shot entirely in the slums of Bombay with a largely nonprofessional cast from the same streets. Though the drama is at times misty and melodramatic, her clear-eyed look at the mercenary world around these ultimately fragile forgotten children earned her the Caméra D’Or at Cannes in 1988. –Sean Axmaker

From director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding), this “brilliantly achieved, stunning and p (more…)