Rudaali

Overview

Shanichari is a beautiful girl born in lower cast and her life is full of sufferings because of lower cast, poor finances, lost parents, drunken husband, mischievous son. The title refers to a custom in some parts of Rajasthan—where aristocratic women were long kept secluded and veiled—of hiring professional women mourners on the death of a male relative, a rudaali (pronounced “roo-dah-lee”—literally, a female “weeper”) to publicly express the grief that family members, constrained by their high social status, were not permitted to display—or at times, perhaps did not feel. Underwritten by the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and Doordarshan (Indian national television) and based on a short story by famed Bengali author Mahasweta Devi—whose tales often focus on the travails of low-caste women.

Cast

Dimple Kapadia

Shanichari

Rakhee Gulzar

Bhikni

Raj Babbar

Thakur

Raghubir Yadav

Budhwa

Sushmita Mukherjee

Mungri

Amjad Khan

Thakur Ramavtar Singh

Ravi Jhankal

Suneel Sinha