Court (film)

Cast

Development and production

The idea for the film occurred to Tamhane in 2011, after he had just finished travelling to festivals with his debut short film, Six Strands. He thought about the idea of a realistic courtroom drama in an Indian setting and at the insistence of his friend Vivek Gomber, an actor he had previously worked with, he set about writing the script.

In an interview with ScreenDaily, he said, "I never imagined I would tackle a courtroom drama, as I’m not a big fan of genre films. But when I came across the idea of a realistic trial unfolding in a lower court of Mumbai, it made me curious. It felt like the complete opposite of what I, as an audience, would expect from a courtroom film; the lawyers were not good orators, the documents were misplaced, the arguments were technical and redundant. I was amused by this setting, and decided to probe further."

He started researching and interviewing people, a process that went on for a year, utilising notes, free-association essays, video, and picture references. Pre-production involved six months of script research, six months of casting, and eight months of location recce. The crew was largely made up of people working on their first fictional feature film. The cast largely included non-professional actors, including bank employees, government employees, and teachers.

In an interview to Bikas Mishra of Indian indie film website DearCinema.com, Tamhane said, "Everybody in the crew was involved in intensive pre-production which included watching documentaries like Jai Bhim Comrade, touching base with activists and political groups, going to their houses and clicking pictures of the props in their houses, attending events with them etc. We created a database of colours, props, costumes and faces which made it easy for us to be closer to the essence of the subject, not necessarily the reality."

The film then took three years to make and was produced by Gomber, who also plays the defence lawyer Vinay Vora in the film, with assistance from the Hubert Bals Fund of International Film Festival Rotterdam.

International

Court has received largely positive reviews in the international film festival circuit. In his Venice review, Variety's Weissberg further wrote: "Outdated, elephantine courts are an easy target, yet it’s the way Tamhane coolly exposes the flaws that renders the film so powerful, making clear that the problem isn’t simply with what’s on the books, but also with the people pedantically interpreting them." Neil Young of The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the film at Antalya, stating: "Mumbai's Chaitanya Tamhane emerges as one of the world's most accomplished and promising film-makers under 30 with his quietly steely legal drama Court, a bluntly-titled chronicle of politically-motivated injustice." In French publication Le Monde, Jacques Mandelbaum called Court "a major movie on the worrying state of freedom of speech in the Indian democracy" and lauded the "intelligence and sensitivity" of Tamhane's direction. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 100% of 25 critics have given the film a positive review, with a score average of 8.1/10.

It also received five-star reviews from London-based indie film site Dog And Wolf and Spanish film site El antepenúltimo mohicano; and four-star reviews from British blogs Cine-Vue and CultureFly.

In India

Court has an 8.5 Positive rating on ReviewMonk, an Indian movie review aggregation site (similar to MetaCritic).

Court premiered in India at the 16th Mumbai Film Festival in October 2014, winning Best Film and Best Director as well as a special mention from the jury for its cast. Reviews from the festival have universally praised the film. Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in called it a "remarkably assured, engrossing study of the power of the law and order machinery to crush protest through delays, deferred hearings and demands for further evidence." Mayank Shekhar, owner of pop culture website TheW14.com, wrote in Open Magazine about the film, calling it "a deeply humanistic account" and his favourite Indian film of the year. FirstPost's Deepanjana Pal called it "ludicrous, hilarious, and heartbreaking." Meenakshi Shedde reviewed the film in Mid-Day, concluding her piece with: "Here’s hoping these — and similar — films find distribution in India soon." Suprateek Chatterjee included it in his list of the top five films at the festival in a piece for IBNLive, writing, "Tamhane is Indian cinema's next big thing and Court is destined to be a classic."

In light of the film's critical success, Forbes Magazine's Indian edition profiled Tamhane in its annual '30 Under 30' list, calling him "Indian cinema's new voice of subversion."

Distribution and release

Court was acquired by Artscope Films of French producer-distributor-sales agent Memento Films in late August 2014, just ahead of its Venice premiere. As of December 2014, they had sold the film in four territories: Canada, Greece, the Middle East, and Hong Kong. On 3 February 2015, American independent film distributor Zeitgeist Films announced that they had acquired the film for exhibition in the United States, and the film had its US premiere at the 44th edition of New York's New Directors/New Films Festival on 18 March 2015.

Awards

71st Venice International Film Festival (Orizzonti)

16th Mumbai Film Festival (International competition)

51st International Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival (International competition)

Vienna International Film Festival

Hong Kong Asian Film Festival

Minsk Film Festival Listapad (Youth on the March competition)

Auteur Film Festival (International Competition)(Serbia)

Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival (International competition)

Singapore International Film Festival

2morrow Festival (Moscow)

FICUNAM (Unam International Film Festival) (Mexico)

62nd National Film Awards (India)