Amu

A young woman of Indian descent is torn between her loyalty to her single mother in Los Angeles and the powerful sense of homecoming she feels when she visits Delhi. Shonali Bose’s film was censored in India for daring to refer to the bloody riots in Delhi that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984.

“Courageous, honest, compelling.” (Mira Nair, director, Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake)

“AMU, the ambitious debut feature by Shonali Bose, wears its political heart on its sleeve and is unafraid to tackle big topics: identity, history, truth, injustice.” (Rachel Saltz, New York Times)

“Born in India, but raised in America after being orphaned at age 3, 21-year-old Kaju (Konkona Sensharma) has returned to New Delhi as a tourist — one with a video camera and many questions about her past and that of her native country. As she makes her way around the city, Kaju begins picking up hints that the city’s residents are haunted by memories of the 1984 uprisings that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi, riots in which some 5,000 Sikhs were killed at the urging, it has long been alleged, of the Indian government itself. This debut feature from writer-director Shonali Bose has a powerful finale, in which the filmmaker uses imaginative camera angles and a vibrant sound design to re-create the turmoil and terror of the riots, while also revealing melodramatic yet plausible secrets involving Kaju’s birth parents. Moviegoers, however, are warned in advance to be patient, as it takes Bose, who was a college freshman living in Delhi in 1984, nearly half the film to even mention the killings, and another stretch to get to the flashbacks. Her stealthy path to revelation can be a bit maddening. That said, the flashback sequences are vibrant and intense, and the film’s long closing shot is so dense with feeling for a nation and its people that Bose deserves to be noted as a filmmaker to watch. (Chuck Wilson, L.A. Weekly)