DVD Release date: 21st April 2008
Running time: 120 minutes
RRP: £17.99
Cert: 18 TBC
“Astonishing… Epic-scale filmmaking” – LA Times
Out for the first time on DVD with exclusive director commentary by Shekhar Kapur
From Shekhar Kapur, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated director of “Elizabeth”, comes one of the most powerful and controversial portraits of a warrior, martyr and legend that cinema has ever produced. Based on intimate, shattering prison diaries, Kapur’s film tells the incredible true story of India’s Bandit Queen.
Her name was Phoolan Devi, the Goddess of Flowers. She was India’s most infamous outlaw; a kidnapper, murderer and scourge of the upper castes. Sold into marriage aged 11, she was beaten and humiliated, living for years in virtual slavery. Until one day, she found the strength to rise up, to unite a makeshift army of maltreated and neglected citizens and in a five-year reign of terror cut a swath of bloody vengeance against those responsible for the brutality of her past.
Originally banned in its home country, where Indian critics had hailed it as one of the 20 greatest motion pictures the industry had ever produced, “Bandit Queen” is a violent and moving testimony to a real-life folk heroine.
