Salaam Bombay!

The story of Chaipu, a youngster thrown on the streets of Bombay, and his struggle to keep it all together. Excellent performances all around. I especially liked Chanda Sharma as 'Solasaal' and Hansa Vithal as her daughter 'Manju'.

This film gives the creepy feeling you aren't watching actors but a movie made of people going about their daily life.

Even if you don't like the story the cinematography is stunning. Filmed on location in Bombay the movie gives an unvarnished glimpse of many places you'd be unlikely to visit on a vacation there.

The credits state 43 locations in 43 days.

I've seen this movie so many times I don't need to read the sub-titles anymore as I know the dialogue by heart.

A masterpiece. Easily one of the top 100 films of the last 50 years.

Came across this film on a Public channel last night, by mistake... or should I say, by luck! Amazing film, so many layers deep, it got me thinking. I've been a fan of Mira's work since "Mississippi Masala", but had never heard of Salaam Bombay. She demonstrates in this fine film a sense of lighting and composition that's nothing short then breathtaking. The locations were rich as the characters, the acting was touching and sincere... this is a film I won't forget.

The boy Krishna (Shafiq Syed) is abandoned by his mother at the Apollo Circus and she tells him that he can only return home when he can afford 500 rupees to pay for the bicycle of his brother that he had trashed. Krishna is left behind by the circus and he takes a train to Bombay.

Krishna is called Chaipau by the street children of Bombay and he works delivering and selling tea for Chacha (Irshad Hashmi), who owns a street bar. Krishna befriends the heroin addicted Chillum (Raghubir Yadav) that sells drugs for the drug dealer and caftan Baba Golub (Nana Patekar), and the girl Manju Golub (Hansa Vithal), who is the daughter of Baba with the prostitute Rekha Golub (Aneeta Kanwar). Krishna dreams on saving 500 rupees to return home, but the life on the streets of Bombay is not easy.

"Salaam Bombay!" is the first feature by the Indian director Mira Nair, who became famous in Brazil with the also excellent "Monsoon Wedding". The heartbreaking story follows the saga and the lost of the innocence of the boy Krishna on the streets of Bombay and is very similar to the one of Pedro ("Los Olvidados" - 1950) on the streets of Mexico City; or Pixote ("Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco" – 1981) on the streets of São Paulo; or the anonymous street kids ("Ali Zaoua, Prince de la Rue" – 2000) on the streets of Casablanca. The documentary style is impressive but easy to understand based on the previous career of Mira Nair.

The problem with abandoned children of Third World countries is a sad reality along decades and shameful governments usually transfer the money that could solve or at least improve this social problem to corruption. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Writer/Director Mira Nair presents the tribulations of life on the streets of Bombay, India through the eyes of a young, homeless boy. His arduous story is captured in spectacular cinematography by Nair, whose use of heavy tones and color combined with intriguing camera angels lend to the film's melancholic nature. Not a commercial blockbuster in the United States, this is moving piece of work that deserves every bit of the critical claim it received. A film that stays with you long after viewing!

i have been late in watching it, but after watching it u feel that you can never be late in watching such a movie. The movie is excellent. Perhaps Mira Nair's best. I was particularly moved by the story and the picturization. you see the striking poverty and its madness, but Mira has been brilliant to show life in it. a lost boy in a big city with a dream to get back home, keeps himself in control, while everything around him is so much polluted with drugs, and prostitution. Poverty is never neat, in the movie also it is validly not shown as such. But the innocence and strength of children, and them growing up in such conditions, makes them more enduring than adults. to say the least the movie is all about life. it is there to show that no matter how hard it is, life exists in slums, in poverty, and people are living it. the movie is a collectors item. one of the best about India - from India...watch it. Salaam Bombay.