A mistaken delivery in Mumbai’s famously efficient lunchbox delivery system (Mumbai’s Dabbawahllahs) connects a young housewife to an old man in the dusk of his life, they build a fantasy world together through notes in the lunchbox. Gradually, this fantasy threatens to overhelm their reality.



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.
director
cast
Ritesh Batra
Irrfan Khan
Nimrat Kaur
Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Denzil Smith
Bharati Achrekar
Nakul Vaid
Yashvi Puneet Nagar
Lillete Dubey
supported by
Cedomir Kolar
Karsten Stöter
Benny Drechsel
Lydia Pilcher
Darfilm
MBB Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg
ARTE
NFDC
Cinema Du Monde
world sales
german distributor
AKFP Films
ASAP Films
DAR Films Productions
The Match Factory
NFP Marketing and Distribution