Aligarh is a Bollywood movie of the year 2016. The genre of the film is Biographical-Drama. ‘Aligarh’ is based on the true story of Ramchandra Siras, a Marathi professor at Aligarh Muslim University(AMU). The total runtime of the movie is 114 minutes. ‘Aligarh’ was made on an Rs 11 crore budget and was a commercial success, earning Rs 205 crores at the box office.
Ramchandra Siras is a Marathi professor & also the head of Modern Indian Languages Faculty at AMU. The movie starts with a local TV station crew barging into Ramchandra’s house and filming him having sex with a rickshaw-puller. The news is spread, and he is forced to leave his housing at university because of it. He gets defamed and disallowed by everyone. The rest of the story describes the difficulties he had to face for a crime he didn’t even commit.
Manoj Bajpayee as Prof. Ramchandra Siras
Rajkumar Rao as Journalist Deepu Sebastian
Ashish Vidyarthi as Advocate Anand Grover
Manoj Bajpayee’s acting overshadows everyone in the film. The majority of the movie is focused on Manoj Bajpayee only. Other actors get minimal screen-time in this movie. The details in his acting are mind-blowing, and you will surely love it. Manoj Bajpayee won 2 awards for this movie:-
- ‘Best Actor’ at ’10th Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
- ‘Critics Award For Best Actor’ at 62nd Filmfare Awards.
Direction: ‘Hansal Mehta‘ had done a great job in directing this movie. He was successfully able to show a sensitive issue in a very subtle way. The dialogues were excellent, and also the arguments pointed out through this movie were very good. Most importantly, he showed something which is not even appropriately talked about in our Indian society. Kudos to his direction. We need more eye-opening films like this on other similar topics.
First of all, I will accept this movie is a little uneasy to watch. But, when you see it, you realize we need more films like this. ‘Aligarh’ talks a lot about our conservative Indian society, and the need to change our thinking on topics like homosexuality.
Homosexuality is still considered taboo in India although it has become legal since 2018. The real change we need is in the thinking of our people. If citizens will not accept homosexuality, then what’s the use of this law? We need to open up regarding this matter and accept people for who they are and treat them equally.
‘Aligarh‘ is a must-watch for everyone as it educates us on the topic of homosexuality. Although, sadly, an influential movie like this had too many controversies around it during its launch. It is a critically-acclaimed movie, and you should not miss out on this! I would rate this movie a 9 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone who loves drama & want to know about Ramchandra Siras.