Lagaan at 25: Aamir Khan marks the milestone in Melbourne
A special screening celebrated the enduring cricket drama as the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne prepared for its seventeenth edition.
Twenty-five years after Lagaan first reached cinemas, Aamir Khan joined a special Melbourne celebration of the film's long cultural life. The July 9 screening at ACMI served as a curtain-raiser for the seventeenth Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, whose main programme runs from August 13 to 23.
Directed by Ashutosh Gowariker and released in 2001, Lagaan follows villagers in colonial India who challenge British officers to a cricket match with an oppressive land tax at stake. Its mix of sports drama, music and historical fiction found audiences well beyond India. The film later became the third Indian title nominated for the Academy Award category then known as Best Foreign Language Film.
The anniversary arrives at a moment when Indian films are building wider festival and theatrical networks overseas. Revisiting Lagaan in Melbourne is therefore more than a nostalgia screening: it highlights a movie that helped demonstrate how a specifically Indian story could travel internationally without shedding its language, setting or musical identity.