As India gets closer to celebrating its 75th Independence Day, patriotism is palpable. The Indian film industry has produced many films depicting the nation’s freedom struggle and patriotism during the last 75 years. Movies about urgent societal issues and border conflicts with neighbours after Independence are also produced in India. Financialexpress.com has compiled a list of the best patriotic movies for this I-Day. As follows:
1. Rang De Basanti
The film Rang De Basanti was written, produced, & filmed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra in 2006. Rensil D’Silva also contributed to the script. Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Siddharth, Atul Kulkarni, Sharman Joshi, Soha Ali Khan, and Kunal Kapoor, with British actress Alice Patten, are the ensemble cast members of the movie. It centres on a British film student who visits India to record the lives of five Indian revolutionary independence warriors. After leaving DU, a squad of friends loiters around their former campus until British director Alice Patten puts them in a film she’s shooting about independence fighters during British rule.
2. LOC Kargil
The 2003 Indian historical war movie LOC Kargil, developed and directed by J. P. Dutta under the brand of “J. P. Films,” is based on the Kargil War that India and Pakistan fought. Bollywood stars make up the majority of the cast, and the score and songs for the movie were written by Aadesh Shrivastava & Anu Malik, respectively. The film is centered on the Indian Army’s successful Mission Vijay, which was started in May 1999 when Pakistan invaded and occupied the vital heights in the Kargil region. The operation’s goal was to drive the Pakistanis back to the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC). The Indian Government summons its Army for defence after Pakistani forces cross the Border into Indian territory. Many people are killed in confrontations, and it destroys entire families.
3. Border
The 1997 Indian epic war movie Border was written, produced, and directed by J. P. Dutta. It adapts actual events at the Battle of Longewala in 1971 and is set during the Indo-Pakistani War of that year. Sunny Deol, Sunil Shetty, Jackie Shroff, Akshaye Khanna, Puneet Issar, Sudesh Berry, and Kulbhushan Kharbanda are among the ensemble actors in the movie. Tabu, Raakhee, Pooja Bhatt, and Sharbani Mukherjee appear in supporting roles. Dutta’s fantasy undertaking was Border. 120 Indian soldiers inside the Longewala area defend their post the entire night before receiving support from the Indian Air Force the following morning.
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4. Lagaan
Ashutosh Gowariker authored and directed the 2001 Hindi-language sports drama movie Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India. Aamir Khan, who acts in the film along with debutante Gracy Singh, and British actresses Rachel Shelley & Paul Blackthorne, produced it. An arrogant British Indian Military officer challenges a Central Indian village’s residents to a game of cricket as a bet to avert paying the revenues they owe. The movie takes place in 1893, during the late Victorian times of India’s colonial British Raj. The residents are burdened by heavy taxation and several years of drought. The year was 1893, and the British colonized India. The dictatorial Captain Russell has enforced a special land tax on the residents of a small village. An indignant farmer who openly gathers the villagers to oppose the levy is named Bhuvan (Aamir Khan). Russell proposes a creative solution to the problem: he dares Bhuvan & his men to a match cricket, an unheard-of game in India. The tax will be eliminated if Bhuvan and his troops defeat Russell’s group.
5. Raazi
Meghna Gulzar with Vineet Jain, Karan Johar, Hiroo Yash Johar, and Apoorva Mehta, under the brands of Junglee Pictures and Dharma Productions, are the producers of the 2018 Indian spy action thriller film Raazi. Vicky Kaushal, Shishir Sharma, Rajit Kapur, with Jaideep Ahlawat play supporting parts alongside Alia Bhatt, who plays the lead. The story of an Indian Analysis and Research Wing (RAW) agent who, at her father’s request, marries military personnel in the Pakistan army to communicate meaning to India before the India-Pakistan War of 1971 is centred on Harinder Sikka’s 2008 novel Calling Sehmat.
6. Rocketry: The Nambi Effect
R. Madhavan is the writer, producer, and director of the 2022 Indian autobiographical drama film Rocketry: The Nambi Effect. The film is the autobiography of Nambi Narayanan, a researcher at the ISRO who was accused of espionage and then cleared and portrayed by Madhavan. The narrative begins with Narayanan’s time at Princeton University as a graduate student before moving on to his career as a scientist and the erroneous espionage accusations against him. Principal photography began after its formal announcement in October 2018 and took place in numerous nations, including France, Russia, and India. Due to his brilliance and dedication, East Indian aeronautical engineer Nambi Narayanan develops enemies and is accused of espionage.
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7. URI: The Surgical Strike
Aditya Dhar, a newbie, wrote and directed the action movie Uri: The Surgical Strike in 2019. Ronnie Screwvala, under the RSVP Movies banner, sponsored the film. It tells the tale of Colonel Kapil Yadav of the Para Special Forces, who performed an essential role in the events. In September 2017, one year after the historical facts of the 2016 Indian Line of Control strike, producer Ronnie Screwvala announced the movie. An undercover operation against a group of terrorists who assaulted a base in Uri, Kashmir, in 2016 that killed numerous soldiers is being directed by Major Vihaan Singh Shergill of something like the Indian Army.
8. Parmanu: The Story Of Pokhran
Parmanu: is a 2018 Hindi-language historical military drama film authored by Saiwyn Quadras, Sanyuktha Chawla Sheikh, and Sharma. Abhishek Sharma directed it. Zee Studios, JA Entertainment, and KYTA Productions banners produced it. The movie is centred on the Indian Army’s 1998 nuclear bomb test explosions in Pokhran. Diana Penty, Boman Irani, & John Abraham play the leading parts.
Parmanu’s release date was initially set for December 8, 2017, but it was delayed to avoid competing with Padmaavat (2018). Conflicts between the movie’s producers, Abraham, with KriArj Entertainment caused it to be further postponed. On May 25, 2018, it was ultimately made available.
9. Article 15
Anubhav Sinha, who also co-wrote the script with Gaurav Solanki, is the director and producer of the 2019 Indian Hindi-language criminal drama movie Article 15. Ayushmann Khurrana plays a police detective in the movie who investigates the abduction of three girls from a rural town while learning about caste-based oppression’s past. Nassar, Manoj Pahwa, Isha Talwar, Kumud Mishra, Sayani Gupta, Sushil Pandey, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Veen Harsh, and Sumbul Touqeer make up the screen presence. The movie is called after Article 15 of the Indian Constitution, which forbids discrimination based on birthplace, caste, race, or religion.
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10. Major
Major is a biographical action movie in 2022 written and directed by Adivi Sesh. It was also produced by G. Mahesh Babu Entertainment, Sony Pictures International Productions, and A+S Movies. In the film, Sesh portrays Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, which also stars Prakash Raj, Saree Manjrekar, Sobhita Dhulipala, Revathi, Murali Sharma, and Anish Kuruvilla and is centred on the biography of the soldier who died in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. It chronicles Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s professional and personal lives while simultaneously filming in Telugu. The principal shooting lasted from February 2020 through December 2021. The existence of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who battled against terrorists and perished in the line of duty during the 2008 Mumbai, India, Taj Palace Hotel bombings.
11. Mission Mangal
In 2019, Jagan Shakti released the drama film Mission Mangal in the Indian Hindi language. It was produced by Cape of Good Films, Fox Star Studios, Hope Productions, Aruna Bhatia, and Anil Naidu. It features an ensemble actor that includes Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Vidya Balan, Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Nithya Menen, and Sharman Joshi, minor characters, along with H. G. Dattatreya, Dalip Tahil, Vikram Gokhale, Sanjay Kapoor, but rather Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub among others in secondary roles. The film is based on lives. Principal photography for the film started in Nov 2018 after Kumar received the script from Shakti, who served as assistant dean on his 2018 film Pad Man. The Mars Orbiter Mission is the only goal of a group of ISRO experts who struggle in their professional and private lives.
12. Sardar Udham
A 2021 Hindi-language autobiographical, historical epic film titled Sardar Udham is filmed by Shoojit Sircar and financed by Rising Sun Films and Kino Works. Shubhendu Bhattacharya & Ritesh Shah composed the screenplay, with Bhattacharya also penning the story and Shah writing the lines while assisting Bhattacharya. Vicky Kaushal played the title role in the movie, which starred Shaun Scott, Amol Parashar, Stephen Hogan, Banita Sandhu, and Kirsty Averton in supporting roles. It was based on the story of Udham Singh, a resistance fighter from Punjab who murdered Michael O’Dwyer in London to exact revenge for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar. While still in college, Shoojit Sircar proposed the idea for a biopic about Udham Singh, with plans to start production in the mid-1990s. However, it usually took him two decades to conduct the necessary research. Irrfan Khan was initially set to play the title role, but he eventually withdrew owing to health issues. Therefore Kaushal was later offered the part.
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13. Kesari
Anurag Singh wrote and directed the 2019 war film Kesari, released in Hindi. Under Dharma Productions, Cape of Good Films, Azure Entertainment, & Zee Studios, it was co-produced by Aruna Bhatia, Hiroo Yash Johar, and Karan Johar Apoorva Mehta, & Sunir Khetarpal. The movie features Vikram Singh Chauhan, Jaspreet Singh, Sarwar, Vansh Bhardwaj, Vivek Saini, Vikram Kochhar, & Rakesh Sharma in secondary parts Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra in a unique appearance. The Battle of Saragarhi, fought in 1897 between 21 members of the 36th Sikhs of the British Indian Army and 10,000 members of the Afridi and Orakzai Pashtun tribes, is chronicled in this book. Kesari was once intended to be production cooperation between Salman Khan & Johar, with Akshay Kumar playing the lead role. However, Khan eventually left the project when it was confirmed in October 2017. The role of Kumar’s character’s wife was given to Parineeti Chopra. The movie’s main visuals were captured between December and January last year.
14. RRR
The epic action-drama RRR was written by V. Vijayendra Prasad and S. S. Rajamouli, and S. S. Rajamouli filmed it in 2022. Ram Charan, N. T. Rama Rao Jr., Alia Bhatt, Samuthirakani, Shriya Saran, Ray Stevenson, Alison Doody, & Olivia Morris are the actors who appear in the movie. Two real-life Indian nationalists, Alluri Sitarama Raju with Komaram Bheem, and their struggle against the Britishers are the subject of this fictitious tale.
15. The Legend Of Bhagat Singh
Rajkumar Santoshi is the filmmaker of the 2002 Hindi-language autobiographical period drama The Legend of Bhagat Singh. The movie is about Bhagat Singh, a resistance fighter who, along with other members of something like the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, battled for the Independence of India. Along with Sushant Singh, D. Santosh, and Akhilendra Mishra serving as the other main characters, it stars Ajay Devgan as the film’s title character. Amrita Rao, Farida Jalal, and Raj Babbar all have supporting parts. The movie follows Singh’s life from his early years, when he sees the Jallianwala Bagh slaughter, to the day of his execution on March 23, 1931—his hanging day. On a $200–$250 million budget, the movie was made by Kumar and Ramesh Taurani’s Tips Industries.
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16. Chak De! India
Chak De! India is a 2007 Hindi-language sports movie produced and directed by Aditya Chopra underneath the Yash Raj Films label, with a screenplay by Jaideep Sahni. Shah Rukh Khan plays Kabir Khan in the film, a former field hockey team captain for India. Due to religious prejudice, Khan is shunned from the sport following a catastrophic loss to Pakistan. Seven years later, to atone for his actions, he accepts the position of coach of the Indian national women’s hockey team. with the mission of making the team’s sixteen problematic players into an honourable ones. After reading about the India women’s national field hockey team’s victory at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in a newspaper, screenwriter Sahni was motivated to compose the script for Chak De! India. Although the real coaches and teammates served as inspiration for the characters, the screenplay was made up by Sahni. Although Sahni was unaware of Mir Ranjan Negi’s hardships when creating the script, Kabir Khan’s problems were similar to those that Mir Ranjan Negi experienced as a hockey player.
17. Mission Kashmir
The action thriller Mission Kashmir was produced and directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra in 2000. Suketu Mehta wrote the film’s screenplay, and it starred Sanjay Dutt, Preity Zinta, Hrithik Roshan, Sonali Kulkarni, and Jackie Shroff. The agony of a young child called Altaaf Khan (Roshan) is depicted in the movie after police officers mistakenly kill his entire family. When Altaaf learns that the police chief (Dutt), who is to blame for this, has adopted him, he wants retribution and turns to terrorism. The sadness of children suffering in conflict is also discussed in the movie, along with terrorism. The violence in it earned it an R rating in the US. At the Stockholm International Film Festival, the movie was shown.
18. Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi
A 2019 Hindi-language historical drama film inspired by the life of Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi is titled Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi. Kangana Ranaut and Krish Jagarlamudi are the directors, and V. Vijayendra Prasad wrote the screenplay. The movie, by Zee Studios, features Ranaut in the lead role. The film was based on Rani Lakshmi Bai’s actual narrative.
On January 25, 2019, Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi was broadcast on 3700 screens across 50 nations. The movie’s theatrical run had a successful worldwide and Indian reception. When the East India Company seeks to conquer the ruler of Jhansi, his wife Manikarnika stands her ground and refuses to submit. Her uprising quickly develops into a ferocious revolt against the British Raj.
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19. Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty
In the 2014 action patriotic movie Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty, directed by A. R. Murugadoss, the primary actors are Akshay Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, and Freddy Daruwala, with Govinda and Sumeet Raghavan filling out the supporting cast. It is a reimagining of Murugadoss’ own 2012 Tamil film Thuppakki and centres on an Indian Army officer who visits Mumbai while on vacation and sets out to find and neutralize the terrorist who is in charge of a network of sleeper cells. An army officer is caught in a bomb blast by a sleeper agent who admits that further bomb strikes are planned throughout the city. The officer prevents the additional explosives and devises a strategy to capture the perpetrator of these assaults.
20. Mother India
Nargis, Rajendra Kumar, Raaj Kumar, and Sunil Dutt appear in Mehboob Khan’s 1957 Indian epic action thriller Mother India. The movie’s title was chosen to contrast the derogatory book Mother India by American novelist Katherine Mayo from 1927. Mother India relates to a deep sense of Indian nationalism and country and metaphorically depicts India as a nation in the years following its Independence in 1947. Radha (Nargis) with Shamu (Rajendra Kumar) is getting married, but the loan they took to pay for the celebration causes them to lose everything. The couple must give comprising three halves of their crop to the money changers since they cannot pay the rising interest rates. When a loose boulder crushes Shamu’s arm as he works in the fields to alleviate his poverty, he cannot work. He feels ashamed at his newfound inability to support his family.
21. Airlift
Akshay Kumar and Nimrat Kaur feature in Raja Krishna Menon’s 2016 action-thriller movie Airlift, which follows Ranjit Katyal, a Kuwait-based businessman, as he organizes the departure of Indians based in Kuwait during Saddam Hussein’s Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, which sparked the start of the Gulf War. On a 320 million dollar budget, the movie was commonly accompanied by Abundantia Entertainment, Cape of Good Films, Hari Om Entertainment, T-Series, and Viacom 18 Motion Pictures. The plot is based on the accurate account of a Malayali businessman who lives and works in Kuwait, Mathunny Mathews. Indian businessman Ranjit Katiyal and his family live a happy and prosperous life in Kuwait. But when Iraq invades Kuwait, he decides to put his life in danger to help his stranded fellow citizens.
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22. Bhuj: The Pride Of India
Abhishek Dudhaiya is the director of the 2021 Indian war film Bhuj: The Pride of India. The story, which takes place in 1971 during the Indo-Pakistani War, centres on Indian Air Force Commanding Officer Vijay Karnik, who was in charge of the Bhuj Air Force Base at the time. With the assistance of 300 local women, he was able to rebuild the damaged landing strip in just 72 hours. Along with Sanjay Dutt, Nora Fatehi, Sonakshi Sinha, Sharad Kelkar, Pranitha Subhash, Ammy Virk, and Ihana Dhillon, the movie also stars Ajay Devgn as Karnik. In Hyderabad, Indore, Kutch, Bhopal, Lucknow, Goregaon, Kolkata, and Dubai, filming began in June 2019.
23. Shershaah
Shershaah is a 2021 Indian autobiographical war film in the Hindi language, written and produced by Vishnuvardhan, based on the life of Vikram Batra, a soldier killed in the Kargil War. Hiroo Yash Johar, Apoorva Mehta, Karan Johar, Shabbir Boxwala, Ajay Shah, and Himanshu Gandhi served as producers with Dharma Productions and Kaash Productions. Kiara Advani plays his girlfriend Dimple Cheema, Sidharth Malhotra plays Batra, and his twin brother Vishal.
24. Ghazi
An Indian war movie from 2017 called Ghazi was directed and written by Sankalp Reddy. The movie was shot in two languages, Hindi and Telugu, with The Ghazi Attack as its working title in Hindi. The 1971 Indo-Pakistani War incident that led to the mysterious sinking of the PNS Ghazi is the subject of the movie starring Rana Daggubati, Taapsee Pannu, Kay Kay Menon, and Atul Kulkarni. The film, which debuted to favourable reviews on February 17, 2017, was released in Telugu, Hindi, and a Tamil dub. The 1971 Indo-Pakistan War served as the basis for the fictional film Ghazi. The narrative centres on an Indian Navy submarine, an executive naval officer, and his team, who spent 18 days submerged.
25. Gold
Reema Kagti authored and filmed the 2018 Hindi-language sports film Gold: The Dream That United Our Nation, & Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani served as the film’s producers. The film’s ensemble cast members are Akshay Kumar, Mouni Roy, Kunal Kapoor, Amit Sadh, Vineet Kumar Singh, Sunny Kaushal, and Nikita Dutta. He travels with the nation’s first national hockey league to the 1948 Summer Olympics.
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