It has been 25 years since a three-hour period drama about a cricket match became one of the most celebrated films India has ever sent abroad. As "Lagaan" reaches its silver anniversary, its producer and star, Aamir Khan, is marking the occasion on the festival circuit — and the film's standing shows little sign of fading.
A film that reached the Academy
Released in 2001 and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker, "Lagaan" earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, as Encyclopaedia Britannica notes. It became only the third Indian film nominated in the category — after "Mother India" (1957) and "Salaam Bombay!" (1988) — and remains the most recent to do so.
Its route to that recognition was improbable. At a time when Hindi cinema struggled for sustained attention overseas, an ambitious, sprawling sports epic in a rural period setting managed to win over festival audiences and international critics.
The story
Set in 1893, during British colonial rule, "Lagaan" follows villagers in central India who, worn down by drought and a heavy land tax — the "lagaan" of the title — accept a wager from a British officer: beat his men at cricket and the tax will be waived; lose, and it will be tripled. The match becomes a stand-in for a larger struggle over dignity and self-rule, and Khan's performance as the villager who rallies his neighbours anchored the drama.
A wide success
The film was a substantial commercial and critical hit at home, ranking among the year's top-grossing Hindi releases, according to Britannica, and it swept that season's major Indian film awards, including honours for best film and best director. Its lasting significance, though, lay in what it signalled: that Indian films made with scale and craft could command serious attention well beyond South Asia.
An enduring reputation
Khan went on to build a career associated with socially themed, widely seen films, and "Lagaan" is often cited as an early marker of that sensibility. The 25th-anniversary tributes have included the film's selection for celebration at the London Indian Film Festival, Outlook India reported, alongside a theatrical re-release that reintroduces it to audiences too young to have seen it the first time.
For all the nostalgia around the anniversary, the film's appeal rests on something plainer: a well-told underdog story, rooted in a particular time and place, whose themes of courage and community travel easily across borders.
