# Khandahar
**Khandahar** (खंडहर, English title *The Ruins*) is a 1984 Hindi-language drama film directed by [Mrinal Sen](https://www.edgepedia.org/mrinal-sen), adapted from [Premendra Mitra](https://www.edgepedia.org/premendra-mitra)'s Bengali short story *Telenapota Abishkar* (Discovering Telenapota). It stars [Shabana Azmi](https://www.edgepedia.org/shabana-azmi) as Jamini, Naseeruddin Shah as the photographer Subhash, Pankaj Kapur, Annu Kapoor, and Gita Sen, the director's wife, as Jamini's blind, ailing mother. The film was released in India on 8 June 1984, screened at that year's Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section, and won three National Film Awards.[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/khandhar) • [2](https://d1f72a6kha0tf8.cloudfront.net/khandhar) • [3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/khandhar-2/) • [4](https://www.mrinalsen.org/khandhar.html)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and screenplay | Mrinal Sen, from the story *Telenapota Abishkar* by Premendra Mitra[2](https://d1f72a6kha0tf8.cloudfront.net/khandhar) |
| Language and release | Hindi; released in India on 8 June 1984[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/khandhar) |
| Principal cast | Shabana Azmi (Jamini), Naseeruddin Shah (Subhash), Pankaj Kapur (Dipu), Annu Kapoor (Anil), Sreela Majumdar (Gauri), Gita Sen (the mother)[5](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085785/fullcredits/) |
| Key crew | Cinematography K.K. Mahajan; music Bhaskar Chandavarkar; art direction Nitish Roy; editing Mrinmoy Chakraborty[3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/khandhar-2/) • [6](https://biffes.org/frontend/images/widget/2nd%20BIFFes%202008_compressed.pdf) |
| Cannes 1984 | Screened in Un Certain Regard; withdrawn from the competition section at the festival's request[3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/khandhar-2/) • [7](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/play-it-again-cannes/) |
| National Film Awards 1984 | Best Direction (Sen), Best Actress (Azmi), Best Editor (Mrinmoy Chakraborty)[4](https://www.mrinalsen.org/khandhar.html) |
| International honors | Golden Hugo for Best Film, Chicago Film Festival; Special Jury Prize, Montreal World Film Festival[4](https://www.mrinalsen.org/khandhar.html) |
| Restoration | Restored by Reliance MediaWorks and screened in the Cannes Classics section in 2010[8](https://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/back-from-the-grave/story-cPAbI5fQehIfCYToZtqSQL.html) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Three friends from the city, the photographer Subhash, his cousin Dipu, and their friend Anil, take a short holiday at Dipu's ancestral home, a ruined mansion that once belonged to a feudal estate. Living in one part of the derelict building are Jamini and her mother, who is sick, paralyzed, and blind. The mother survives on the hope that a distant nephew, Niranjan, will one day return and, as promised years ago, marry Jamini. In fact Niranjan is already married with a child and living in the city; Jamini knows the truth but keeps it from her mother.[4](https://www.mrinalsen.org/khandhar.html) • [6](https://biffes.org/frontend/images/widget/2nd%20BIFFes%202008_compressed.pdf)
When the visitors arrive, the mother takes Subhash for the long-awaited suitor. Out of pity, Subhash goes along with the act, and for two and a half days the visitors and Jamini sustain the pretense for the blind woman. Just before the friends leave, the photographer and Jamini have a short meeting and a mute understanding. Subhash returns to his studio in the city, and Jamini is left to her loneliness and to a mother who will now learn the whole truth.[4](https://www.mrinalsen.org/khandhar.html) • [6](https://biffes.org/frontend/images/widget/2nd%20BIFFes%202008_compressed.pdf)
## Production
Sen wrote the screenplay himself and produced the film with Jagdish and Pushpa Chowkhani. K.K. Mahajan, Sen's longtime cinematographer, shot the film, and Bhaskar Chandavarkar composed the music. Location shooting took place in Birbhum, West Bengal, with Gita Sen, the director's wife, playing the mother and Debi Haldar, the makeup artist on most of Sen's films, on the crew.[4](https://www.mrinalsen.org/khandhar.html) • [9](https://www.mansworldindia.com/lifestyle/entertainment/remembering-mrinal-sen)
The film followed Sen's *Ek Din Pratidin* (1979) and *Kharij* (1982), two indictments of middle-class Bengali morality. Shabana Azmi, who played Jamini, said Sen wrote the character from his own inner life, and the filmmaker [Shyam Benegal](https://www.edgepedia.org/shyam-benegal) described *Khandhar* as a film of rare ebullient beauty that still drove its point home.[10](https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/mrinal-sen-5163753/)
## Reception and style
Critics have treated *Khandhar* as a departure from Sen's overtly political films of the 1970s, such as *Interview* (1971), *Calcutta 71* (1972), and *Padatik* (1973). The Telegraph India's centenary assessment called it, together with *Akaler Sandhane*, universally regarded as his finest film, and quoted a critic's description of Sen's shift from "a fire-eating polemicist into a poet of understated delicacy".[11](https://www.telegraphindia.com/entertainment/mrinal-sen-centenary-with-his-hindi-odia-and-telugu-films-the-auteur-showed-how-to-break-the-language-barrier/cid/1937881) A contemporary *India Today* review called it probably Sen's best film to date.[12](https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/society-and-the-arts/films/story/19840229-khandhar-directed-by-mrinal-sen-starring-shabana-azmi-naseeruddin-shah-pankaj-kapoor-802795-1984-02-28)
The film's emotional core lies in what is left unsaid: much of the relationship between Jamini and Subhash is carried by silences and glances rather than dialogue, and the ruins of the mansion mirror the ruined hopes of its inhabitants. Azmi's performance as Jamini is frequently singled out; she won the National Film Award for Best Actress and has said this is the film in which she made the fewest mistakes.[13](https://theprint.in/feature/reel-take/khandhar-mrinal-sen-filmi-flashback/2717987/) • [9](https://www.mansworldindia.com/lifestyle/entertainment/remembering-mrinal-sen)
## Cannes, 1984
In April 1984 the festival's general delegate Gilles Jacob faced two Indian entries for the [Palme d'Or](https://www.edgepedia.org/palme-dor) competition: Sen's *Khandhar* and [Satyajit Ray](https://www.edgepedia.org/satyajit-ray)'s *Ghare Baire*. Because Cannes was celebrating thirty years of Ray's cinema that year, and because Ray had suffered a heart attack during the making of *Ghare Baire*, Jacob asked Sen to withdraw his film from the competition section. Sen complied, and *Khandhar* was instead shown in the Un Certain Regard section.[7](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/play-it-again-cannes/) • [14](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep-focus/palming-off-our-film-legacy/articleshow/20010348.cms)
## Restoration
The print had deteriorated badly; when Cannes asked for the film again for its Classics section, a restoration was undertaken by Reliance MediaWorks at its facility, beginning in September 2009 after the Ministry of Information and [Broadcasting](https://www.edgepedia.org/broadcasting) directed the National Film Archives of India to prioritize digital restoration of Sen's works. The restoration, part of an NFAI initiative covering over 1,000 classic films, took about 5,000 man-hours: the reels were repaired and ultrasonically cleaned, the image was scanned at 2K resolution, and the color grading was done under the guidance of the filmmaker Govind Nihalani. The restored film, encoded as a [Digital Cinema Package](https://www.edgepedia.org/digital-cinema-package) with French subtitles, premiered in the Cannes Classics program on 15 May 2010.[8](https://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/back-from-the-grave/story-cPAbI5fQehIfCYToZtqSQL.html) • [15](https://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/mrinal-sens-khandhar-gets-a-digital-cleanup-for-cannes/) • [7](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/play-it-again-cannes/)
The film has remained in circulation since: it was screened in a Mrinal Sen retrospective at the University of Chicago in November 2023, and the National Film Archive of India lists it among its holdings.[16](https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-10/annual-report-2023-24-english.pdf) • [17](https://nfai.nfdcindia.com/archive.php)
## Versions and runtime
Sources give the running time differently: 1 hour 42 minutes (Rotten Tomatoes and Larousse), 1 hour 46 minutes (Moviebuff, [BookMyShow](https://www.edgepedia.org/bookmyshow), and IMDb), and 106 minutes (festival catalogs).[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/khandhar) • [2](https://d1f72a6kha0tf8.cloudfront.net/khandhar) • [18](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085785) • [6](https://biffes.org/frontend/images/widget/2nd%20BIFFes%202008_compressed.pdf) Most sources, including the Cannes festival and IMDb, record the language as Hindi; a few festival and archive listings describe it as Bengali.[3](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/khandhar-2/) • [16](https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-10/annual-report-2023-24-english.pdf)
## References
1. [The Ruins (Khandhar), Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/khandhar)
2. [Khandhar (1984), Moviebuff](https://d1f72a6kha0tf8.cloudfront.net/khandhar)
3. [KHANDHAR, Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/khandhar-2/)
4. [Khandhar (The Ruins), mrinalsen.org](https://www.mrinalsen.org/khandhar.html)
5. [Khandhar (1984) full cast and crew, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085785/fullcredits/)
6. [The Ruins (Original Title: Khandhar), 2nd Bangalore International Film Festival catalog](https://biffes.org/frontend/images/widget/2nd%20BIFFes%202008_compressed.pdf)
7. [Play It Again, Cannes, The Indian Express (2010)](https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/play-it-again-cannes/)
8. [Back from the grave, Hindustan Times (2010)](https://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/back-from-the-grave/story-cPAbI5fQehIfCYToZtqSQL.html)
9. [Remembering Mrinal Sen, Man's World India](https://www.mansworldindia.com/lifestyle/entertainment/remembering-mrinal-sen)
10. [The world Mrinal Sen built, The Indian Express Eye (2018)](https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/mrinal-sen-5163753/)
11. [Mrinal Sen centenary: With his Hindi, Odia and Telugu films, the auteur showed how to break the language barrier, Telegraph India](https://www.telegraphindia.com/entertainment/mrinal-sen-centenary-with-his-hindi-odia-and-telugu-films-the-auteur-showed-how-to-break-the-language-barrier/cid/1937881)
12. [Khandhar: A silent sonata, India Today (1984)](https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/society-and-the-arts/films/story/19840229-khandhar-directed-by-mrinal-sen-starring-shabana-azmi-naseeruddin-shah-pankaj-kapoor-802795-1984-02-28)
13. [Khandhar is Mrinal Sen's most poetic film, ThePrint (2025)](https://theprint.in/feature/reel-take/khandhar-mrinal-sen-filmi-flashback/2717987/)
14. [Palming off our film legacy, Times of India (2013)](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep-focus/palming-off-our-film-legacy/articleshow/20010348.cms)
15. [Mrinal Sen's Khandhar gets a digital cleanup for Cannes, Satyamshot (2010)](https://satyamshot.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/mrinal-sens-khandhar-gets-a-digital-cleanup-for-cannes/)
16. [Annual Report 2023-24, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India](https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-10/annual-report-2023-24-english.pdf)
17. [National Film Archive of India, film screenings archive](https://nfai.nfdcindia.com/archive.php)
18. [Khandhar (1984), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085785)
---
*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Hindi films of the 1980s*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license