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Courtis a 2014 Indian legal drama film, written and directed by Chaitanya Tamhane in his directorial debut. The film examines the Indian legal system through the Mumbai Sessions Court trial of an aging protest singer, Narayan Kamble (Vira Sathidar), who is accused of encouraging a manhole worker to commit suicide through one of his folk songs. It also stars Geetanjali Kulkarni, Pradeep Joshi and Shirish Pawar.

The film's music was composed by Sambhaji Bhagat while Mrinal Desai and Rikhav Desai served as its cinematographer and editor, respectively. Tamhane was curious to see the difference between the real courtrooms and the way they were depicted in films. He wanted to explore the "judicial nightmare" in an Indian setting after coming across several real-life cases. His friend Vivek Gomber agreed to produce the film and also acted in it. The crew consisted of newcomers and the actors were non-professionals. There are four languages spoken in the film: Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and English. Most of the dialogue is in Marathi as it is set in Maharashtra. Laws are read out in English. The defense lawyer is a Gujarati and speaks Gujarati language.

Court premiered at the 71st Venice International Film Festival in 2014, where it won the Best Film in the Horizons category and the Luigi De Laurentiis award for Tamhane. The film went on to win 18 other awards at several film festivals. It premiered in India at the International competition section of the 2014 Mumbai Film Festival and was released theatrically on 17 April 2015. Upon release, the film received critical acclaim and went on to win the National Film Award for Best Feature Film at the 62nd National Film Awards.

Narayan Kamble is a teacher, social activist and protest singer. He is arrested on the charge of prompting Vasudev Pawar, a manhole worker, to commit suicide. He allegedly committed suicide after being influenced by one of Kamble's protest songs. Lawyer Vinay Vora defends Kamble, who is tried in court and granted bail. Kamble admits to have sung several songs about suicide, but cannot remember if he sang any on the day of the suicide. He also denies any intention to provoke someone to commit suicide. A witness testifies that he saw the manhole worker singing Kamble's song.

In the next hearing of the case, the investigating officer links Kamble with an incarcerated man, Ashwin Bhagat, through a letter, accusing them of planning illegal activity in the city. Vora explains to the court that Bhagat was requesting Kamble to take care of his ailing mother while he was in jail. Nutan, the public prosecutor, informs the court that Kamble possessed two banned books. Vora replies that one book is on Yoga and the other one is a critique of certain rituals of the Goyamari sect. Vora is later beaten by some Goyamaris.

Pawar's widow confesses in court that her husband used to clean the manholes without any safety equipment and had lost one eye from exposure to poisonous sewer gases. She further confesses that he was also an alcoholic, but never talked about committing suicide. She denies his intentions of suicide or having heard Kamble's name before. Vora reads the autopsy report which indicates Pawar died as a result of respiratory failure due to inhalation of hydrogen sulphide, with no sign of self-harm. He also says that the witness who testified against Kamble is a stock witness who has been testifying in several other cases.

Director Chaitanya Tamhane made a short film called Six Strands at the age of twenty three, which was well received at several international film festivals. The project left him "broke and jobless" and under pressure to earn money, but he did not want to assist another director.[3] Tamhane was watching a "typical" conventional courtroom drama on Doordarshan one day when he thought of making a real courtroom drama and started developing the idea for Court.[4]

Tamhane wanted to explore the "judicial nightmare" in an Indian setting after coming across the case of Jiten Marandi, a cultural activist from Jharkhand. Marandi was arrested as a suspect in the Chilkari massacre, which occurred on 26 October 2007, where nineteen people were killed by Naxalites at a public function. Marandi became a suspect because his name was similar to the actual suspect whom the police could not find. He was arrested and tried, but was released in 2016 after proven not guilty.[5] The action against activist singers of the cultural organisation, Kabir Kala Manch on allegations of links with the left wing also inspired the film's narrative.[6] Tamhane was curious by the idea of a realistic court trial unfolding in a lower court of Mumbai after attending some of them, recalling:

It felt like the complete opposite of what I, as an audience, would expect from a courtroom film; the lawyers were not good orators, the documents were misplaced, the arguments were technical and redundant. I was amused by this setting, and decided to probe further.

Tamhane found the incidents that occur in a lower court to be "bizarre" and saw the potential for drama and humour.[8] Another incident which prompted Tamhane to make the film was when a friend had gone to a police station for document submission and had to wait two hours for a printout because the constable did not know how to connect the cable of the printer.[4]

While Tamhane was writing the script, the character of the public prosecutor was male for a long time and he felt the film was "too male", with all main characters being men. Later, he changed that character to a woman.[11]Tamhane saw Anand Patwardhan's documentary Jai Bhim Comrade (2011), when he was about to finish writing the script and cited it as an "invaluable resource" for the reference of the film.[citation needed] Tamhane had written all the scenes outside the courtroom but lacked the main case until he read about the condition of manhole workers in a Tehelka book, which he incorporated into the script.[11] He also read books of Fali Sam Nariman, V. R. Krishna Iyer and watched Krzysztof Kieślowski's 1966 short film The Office for reference.[4] Tamhane wrote scenes about the domestic lives of the lawyers in the film as he was interested in depicting the kind of life they lived outside the courtroom while also juxtaposing their professional lives with their personal one.[4]

Court took three years to complete.[13] The film's planning and pre-production was done in a year. The crew had to build court sets as shooting inside a real court is not allowed. Tamhane and casting director Sachit Puranik would sneak into the Bombay High Court and stay there for almost three hours a day. They researched and observed the real protest singers and activists, and made notes for references on the surroundings and costumes.[10]

Tamhane did not want to make the film in a "conventional manner" and hence opted to have newcomers for the cast and crew. It was the first film for much of its crew, including the production designers, editor and casting director. The film's cinematographer, Mrinal Desai, had a documentary background. Tamhane had previously worked with the film's production designers, Pooja Talreja and Somnath Pal, on his play Grey Elephants in Denmark. Tamhane chose to work with mostly newcomers as he did not wish to have anybody from a Bollywood background: "we wanted people with hunger and passion who would go out of their way to get things done."[3] The film also features first time actors like Pradeep Joshi, Usha Bane and Shirish Pawar.[14]

Vira Sathidar, the editor of Marathi magazine Vidrohi, was cast in role of Narayan Kamble just three weeks before the shoot.[15][16] Gomber played the role of a defence lawyer and was selected after auditioning for the part. The rest of the cast were also selected after auditions including Geetanjali Kulkarni, who is an alumnus of the National School of Drama. The auditions were conducted over the course of nine months with nearly 1,800 people auditioning for several roles. Tamhane borrowed the idea of using non-professional actors from the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.[16] According to him, 80 percent of the cast were non-professional actors who had not been filmed before. Tamhane and his crew members went to banks, railway offices, schools, tea sellers, snack vendors, auto and taxi drivers, and asked people if they would like to act in the film.[3]

Kulkarni followed a real prosecutor's body language, mannerism and manner of speaking.[10] A scene in the film showed a public prosecutor cross-examining the accused, which is not allowed in real trials. Tamhane said that this was a deliberate decision as he had taken "creative liberty" to avoid "hampering the narrative of the film".[citation needed] He also expressed his interest towards the essence of a scene instead of its technical detail.[citation needed]

During production, members of the Anti-Terrorism Squad came on the sets claiming that there was a Naxalite from Nagpur in the film and searched for him. Sathidar was from Nagpur and, like his character, was a human rights activist thereby making him, according to Tamhane, "politically involved". The crew hid him as he had not finished shooting the film's main sequences, and they were worried that his arrest would prevent the film's completion. The ATS had mistaken Sathidar for a Naxalite.[18]

When asked about whether Court is an actual depiction of the Indian judiciary or an exaggerated one, Tamhane said: "[the film] actually talks about the people who comprise the system; the people who run the system and the structural and human failings in not just the Indian judiciary but any institution, or any kind of a place with power dynamics."[18] According to him, the film also highlights the aspect of immigrants snatching the jobs of locals in Mumbai.[4] Court also has elements of black comedy, like a scene where one of Vora's speeches is interrupted by a man putting a pedestal fan.[19] A critic from The New Republic called the film a welcome addition to critiques of the judiciary and favorably compared it to the novels Bleak House (1853) and The Trial (1925). He elaborated that the absurdity of the case is similar to The Trial.[20]

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