Baromas

It was shot in Khartalegao village in Maharashtra’s Amravati district. Don’t bother Khartalegao, says the film’s Facebook page. Most of the crowd scenes comprise farmers of the village. A Hindi screen adaptation of Marathi novelist Sadanand Deshmukh’s Sahitya Akademi award winning film of the same name, Baromas is set in Vidarbha, a region that gets press for farmers’ suicides.

But Baromas is not a tragedy. The film is about farmers who want to move away from debt-ridden agriculture. The film’s protagonists take contrasting routes to their goals—one resorts to banditry, the other adopts the democratic way. As they encounter moneylenders and a corrupt bureaucracy and are dogged by bad luck and uncertain weather, the film becomes what actor Nasiruddin Shah describes a “searingly honest” description of rural problems.

Director Dhiraj Meshram hails from Amravati and Baromas’ cast and crew stayed in Khartalegao for the duration of the shoot, drawing more than 300 people of the district into the film.

With stellar performances by Benjamin Gilani and Seema Biswas, Baromas is a film to look out for.