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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 37 movies from Doordarshan
An impressionistic sketch of ‘the public’ as created by our cinema and its relationship with cinema itself.
Jan 2009
When a revengeful Krishna destroys his brother's motorbike, his mother asks him to return home only when he earns INR 500 to repair it. In a turn of events, he finds himself in a Bombay slum.
Aug 1988
Located in a seaside village in Maharashtra during the 60s, the film unfolds over two decades. It is a tragic tale of how the best of friendships can rupture over a trivial quarrel. Once a rupture takes place, there are always people who know how to turn a quarrel to their own advantage, even if the main adversaries are completely destroyed in the process.
Jan 1996
"Andha Yug"—literally 'Age of Blindness'—is an allegorical play written in the aftermath of the Partition of India by Shri Dharamvir Bharti. Rooted in the epic Mahabharata, this landmark 1989 Delhi performance was staged for the Nehru Shatabdi Samaroh Festival and has since been preserved by the Natya Shodh Sansthan, Kolkata (NSS). Set on the final day of the Kurukshetra war, the narrative chronicles the end of the Dvapara Yuga and the immediate descent into the dark Kali Yuga, triggered by Lord Krishna's demise. This five-act masterpiece explores the moral collapse, cycles of revenge, and psychological trauma of war. It depicts the pyrrhic reality of the Kali Yuga—the worst, shortest, and darkest of the four cosmic ages—in which recursive violence degrades the fabric of civilization, blinding individuals to reason as they are forced to reckon with the devastation's fallout.
Oct 1989
Mammo is an account of a certain period in the life of Riyaz, a teenager who lives with his grandmother Fayyazi as they get a visit from his grandma’s sister Mehmooda Begum Anwar Ali, commonly known as ‘Mammo’.
Jun 1994
A poor lady get ditched by a rich woman, who literally snatches away her son from her by giving the false hopes and promises to her. The destiny turns back, and two brothers separated by misfortune get united.
Jan 1991
When a poor and out-caste village tanner goes to village priest to get the date of his daughter's marriage fixed, the priest in turn asks for labor without pay in exchange.
Jan 1981
Panicker's one-act play deals with the relation of identification between an actor and his or her role. The action takes place on the eve of the last act of the Kathakali piece Keechakavadham (The Killing of Keechaka). The events surrounding the performance uncannily echo events in the play. One character even claims to have killed the lead actor of the play because he detested the character the man portrayed. However, the three different accounts that are presented of the same plot are never resolved or reconciled with each other. Each version is accompanied by a different style of folk music: the tune and rhythm of southern Kerala’s thampuran pattu, the pulluvan pattu and the ayappan pattu. The performers were drawn from the theatre and from Kathakali. In southern India, with its plethora of politicians using their film images to acquire inordinate wealth and power, Aravindan’s TV film bears on an eminently sensitive political as well as aesthetic issue.
Jan 1988
Nallamuthu and Vadivu face several hardships due to the rising poverty and are forced to send their three children to work as child laborers.
Shot in the monsoon of 2018 in the Mirya creek in Maharashtra, the film records the unfolding of fishermen and fishing processes in the village of Mirya. It seeks to highlight some of the troubled and lived realities of the fishing community in the current times in an Indian village. The film is also a deliberation on the process of production of the film itself.
Sep 2019
A documentary on the struggle of Tamil writer Sundara Ramaswamy to evolve modern literature in a society stuck with caste identities, traditional hypocrisy and language chauvinism.
"Golokdham Rahasya" is a mystery drama film about a Bengali biochemist named Nihar Ranjan Dutta and his involvement in a series of events, including a burglary and a murder.
Aug 1992
The film set in the 1940s, in a fictitious village in the Shekhavati region in Rajasthan, where no girl child survives beyond the age of seven. It deals with larger issues of communalism and caste system through four inter-related stories.
Aug 1995
Mumbai, 1992. Naseem, a 15 year-old schoolgirl, lives with her grandfather and grows up with stories of pre-independence communal harmony. Later, she helplessly watches the communal situation regression with the demolition of Babri Masjid.
Oct 1995
The film follows a scrappy taxi driver's fortunes as he tries to break out from the clutches of poverty, devising plans and investing all his money in a dubious schemes which eventually blow out on him, coming under the eye of unscrupulous politician and local goons, yet he still perseveres for his dreams.
Sep 1991
The Film investigates the state of news in India. Journalism is up for sale and selling of editorial space has become both blatant and institutionalised.
Jul 2011
The debate on death penalty is loud and impassioned. Instead of echoing that cacophony, The Death of Us, quietly reflects on a range of cases in which the death penalty was pronounced. Sometimes, ending in the execution of the convicted; sometimes in commutation to a life sentence; and sometimes to acquittal and release. Speaking to some who have been on death row, and others closely involved with the cases, we engage in complex conversations on crime and punishment, revenge and justice, popular rhetoric and personal experiences. Only to find ourselves confronted by larger ethical and moral questions across time and space.
Jan 2018
Chokkalingam, an old man, moves out of town after his wife's death and goes to live with Vasu, his nephew in Chennai. However, Vasu struggles to bear the cost of an additional member in his family.
Jan 1989
Aug 1998
The memoir of a woman married to an orthodox Brahmin philosopher who converts to Christianity, her story explores issues of religious barriers, disillusionment,and romantic devotion.
Jan 1982