Doosra

Set between the last decade of the previous millennium and the turn of this one, the film weaves together two stories of courage and identity. One, played out under the harsh glare of the national spotlight by a maverick captain, Saurav Ganguly, and his defiant team. The other, deeply private, in an orthodox household in small town India. Where an equally defiant young girl, Tara, takes on social prejudices as she comes to terms with her own mind and body. Both stories have their principal characters fighting the demons of tradition, classism and orthodoxy. What brings the two narratives to a head is a single event: When Captain Sourav Ganguly pulls off his shirt and waves it bare-chested from the altar cricket - the balcony at Lords in London - to celebrate India s victory in the 2002 Natwest final against their erstwhile colonial rulers. A defiant celebratory act is suddenly elevated to an iconic image for a nation that finally shed its centuries of inferiority complex to stand proud and comfortable in its own bare skin. The film is a groundbreaking feature format- a fictional narrative woven with well-documented incidents from India s political, economic and sporting history at the turn of the millennium. Tara s violent inner struggle with her own sexual identity, portrayed through rich cultural symbolism, is an allegory for the larger social change sweeping through the nation. Elsewhere, on the world-stage, the unscripted drama of cricket and Sourav s unconventional methods unravels through iconic match footage and archival commentary, in front of cameras at press-conferences, and against the scrutiny of expert interviews. Written by Jamie Schutz Doosra is a 2019 Hindi-language Sport movie featuring Plabita Borthakur, Ankur Vikal, Seema Sasidaran, Samidha Guru and Krishna Gokani. Doosra was released on 1st May 2020.
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