"Actor: Shafiq Syed"

• Salaam Bombay! | Blu Ray | (21/06/2021) from £15.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Unjustly accused of stealing and cast out of his home village by his family, 11yearold Krishna (Shafiq Syed) joins the swathes of dispossessed street children in the slums of Mumbai. Sleeping in the rubble of the city, he struggles to survive in his merciless new environment. Forced to associate with the criminal underworld, Krishna's childhood innocence quickly wanes as the reality of his uncertain future becomes painfully apparent. Salaam Bombay! is the heartrending and impassioned debut fiction feature by director Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding). Shot on the streets of India's secondbiggest city and starring reallife street children, the film is an authentic and unflinching portrayal of the country's impoverished underbelly. Critically lauded and Oscarnominated, Salaam Bombay! is available on Bluray for the first time in the UK.

• Salaam Bombay! | DVD | (16/06/2003) from £20.97   |  Saving you £-7.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Meera Nair's Salaam Bombay was her first film, and one of only three Indian films nominated for an Oscar (the others being Mother India and Lagaan). The deceptively simple documentary style hides a meticulously planned feature in which nothing is left to chance. Real street kids play the leads alongside veteran actors, such as Nana Patekar and Shaukat Azmi, as we follow Chaipau, the urchin who wants to save his 500 rupees to "go home", and his encounters with prostitutes, thugs and drug addicts among whom he finds love and companionship. The story avoids sentimentality by endowing the characters with humanity while never romanticising their plight. Nair eschews the obvious "city of contrasts" theme, presenting only the view from the street, shooting in real locations of Grant Road and its environs. This is one of the greatest presentations of Bombay to date, comparable across genres to Raghu Rai's photography or Vikram Chandra's fiction. On the DVD: Salaam Bombay on DVD includes a compelling scene-by-scene commentary, in which Nair discusses the problems of location shooting, training the children and the impact of the film on the lives of so many of its characters. The film is in Hindi with English subtitles. --Rachel Dwyer

• Salaam Bombay! | DVD | (23/03/2009) from £6.73   |  Saving you £13.26 (66.30%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) adds her angry voice to the cinema of forgotten children in this wrenching drama of an 11-year-old boy (real-life street child Shafiq Syed) who heads to the big city and joins a sea of homeless children and down-and-out adults scrambling to survive the pitiless streets. The fantasy of Bollywood dreams hangs just out of reach in posters movies and radio tunes momentary respites from the hard reality of a world ruled by brutal pimps and drug dealers. Academy Award nominated for Best Foreign Language Film this is a gritty look into the underbelly and plight of Bombay's poor street children who call the gutters of its filthy urban streets home. It is filled with the sights and sounds of this urban nightmare. This highly acclaimed film allows the viewer a peek at another culture only to find that basic human needs and desires are universal.