Director: Satyajit Ray
Script: Satyajit Ray afterde Munshi Premchand's novel Shatranj ke Khilari
Cinematographer: Soumendu Roy
Editor: Dulal Dutta
Music: Satyajit Ray
Art Director: Bansi Chandragupta
Costumes: Shama Zaidi
Choreographer: Birju Maharaj
Cast: Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Amjad Khan, Richard Attenborough
Production: Devki Chitra Productions
Distribution:
Films Sans Frontières
70, bd de Sébastopol
75003 Paris
France
Tel.: 01.42.77.21.84
Fax: 01.42.77.42.66
Mail: [email protected]
www.films-sans-frontières.fr
Year: 1977
35 mm, B & W, 113 min,
OV Hindou, Urdu, English with French Subtitles
In 1856, Luknow is the capital of the Muslim Kingdom of Auadh.
Wajid Ali Shah, the king, is more attracted by arts than by politics. Taking advantage of the situation, Lord Dalhousie, general governor of the East Indies Company, tries to place the kingdom under British rule. British general Outtram finally wins the abdication of this socalled king who gives more importance to his own pleasures than to exercising power. Meanwhile, Mirza Sajjad Ali and Mir Roshan Ali, two aristocratic friends, spend their whole life playing chess, ignoring everything else including their wives. Their passion for this game invented in India, is so strong that they don’t mind the place where to play : at Mirza’s home, or at a lawyer friend despite his serious illness, at Mir’s house or even in the village of a young boy.
