Lunchbox

India/Germany/France 2013

Director: Ritesh Batra

104 minutes, Hindi with ENG/GER subtitles

Starring:
Irrfan Khan
Nimrat Kaur

Cannes 2013, Semaine de la Critique

A wrongly delivered lunchbox connects a housewife - Ila Vaid, to Saajan Fernandes, a lonely man in the dusk of his life. Ila lives in Kandivili, the conservative middle class Hindu enclave. And Saajan lives in Ranwar village, Bandra, an old Christian neighborhood that is threatened by the new high rises of Mumbai.

Very soon Saajan will retire and bid goodbye to a Mumbai that crushed his dreams, took away his loved ones one by one, and turned his hair white. Just then Ila comes into his life. In the big city, that crushes dreams and recycles them everyday, both find a dream to hold on to. They exchange notes in the lunchbox and create a fantasy life. As the lunchbox goes back and forth, this fantasy becomes so elaborate that it threatens to overwhelm their reality.

The characters of THE LUNCHBOX exist on the line between the Mumbai of reality and the Mumbai of fantasy. In the end, they come to a crossroads where they must choose between the two Worlds. THE LUNCHBOX is the story of nostalgia and of hope for the future, and above all, of the small joys of life that need our attention.