General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Blue Umbrella (Chatri Chor) (2005 film)

The Blue Umbrella (Hindi title Chatri Chor, छतरी चोर) is a 2005 Hindi-language Indian film directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, adapted from Ruskin Bond's novella The Blue Umbrella. It tells how a blue umbrella owned by a young village girl, Biniya, obsesses the shopkeeper Nandakishore Khatri in a small village in Himachal Pradesh, and was produced by UTV Motion Pictures with Ronnie Screwvala as producer.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / source	Vishal Bhardwaj; based on Ruskin Bond's novella The Blue Umbrella²
Lead cast	Pankaj Kapur as Nandakishore 'Nandu' Khatri; Shreya Sharma as Biniya¹
Production	UTV Motion Pictures; producer Ronnie Screwvala; budget under Rs 20 million¹^•³
Shooting	26 days in Dalhousie's Khajjiar Valley, Himachal Pradesh, including six days of snow sequences³
Release	Completed in 2005; commercially released in 2007⁴
Honor	National Film Award for Best Children's Film for 2005 (53rd awards)⁵
Runtime	About 90 minutes (Busan festival listing: 94 min)¹^•⁶

Spoilers

Story

Biniya, a young girl living with her widowed mother and wrestler brother in a poor village in the mountainous, snowy region of Himachal Pradesh, trades her bear-claw amulet, a lucky charm, with Japanese tourists for a blue umbrella.⁷ She and the umbrella become popular with tourists and villagers alike. Nandkishore Khatri, the village shopkeeper, takes a fancy to the umbrella and tries several times to buy it from her, without success.⁷

One day, while Biniya is tending her two cows, the umbrella disappears. She suspects Khatri; the police search his house but find nothing. An embittered Khatri then orders a red-and-white Japanese umbrella for himself and becomes popular with villagers and tourists in turn.⁷ When it emerges that the umbrella sent to Khatri by post is Biniya's stolen blue one, dyed, the villagers boycott him, and he works to win back their goodwill.⁷ In the resolution described in a Hindi-language review, Biniya leaves the umbrella at his shop, and Khatri renames his tea stall after the red-and-white umbrella on its roof.⁸

Production

Bhardwaj read Bond's story in May 2003, while editing his film Maqbool, and immediately called the author to request the film rights. Bond directed him to the publisher Rupa & Co, and Bhardwaj sent a cheque at once when told that someone else had been inquiring about the story.⁹ The film was produced by UTV Motion Pictures in association with Bhardwaj, and UTV's chief operating officer Aditya Shastri described it as a mid-budget film without superstars, planned for release during the school summer holidays and for markets such as Spain, France, and Germany that do not necessarily watch Hindi films.⁹

Shooting. The crew shot for 26 days in Dalhousie's Khajjiar Valley in Himachal Pradesh. Bhardwaj called the schedule nightmarish: the snow sequences took six days, were logistically difficult, and the child actors kept crying. He said the budget was under Rs 20 million.³ An earlier report had planned 21 days of shooting in Dalhousie in October followed by six days in January for the snowfall scenes.¹⁰

Visual approach. Bhardwaj decided from the start to use no digital imaging, so that the shots and color palette came entirely from the cinematography, by Sachin Krishn, with nothing added artificially in post-production.³ Bhardwaj also composed the music, Gulzar wrote the lyrics, Aarif Sheikh edited, and Samir Chanda was production designer; the screenplay was written by Minty Kunwar Tejpal, Abhishek Chaubey, and Bhardwaj.²^•¹¹

Release and reception

The film was completed in 2005 but received its commercial release only in 2007, after Bhardwaj's Omkara.⁴ It was screened at the 2005 Busan International Film Festival, whose program described it as blending colorful images with Bollywood-style song and dance while stressing that materialist desires lead to punishment.⁶

Critics responded well to the film's look and to Pankaj Kapur's performance. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 80% Tomatometer score from two reviews and more than 250 audience ratings.¹ A review in Outlook by Namrata Joshi, a journalist at the magazine, called it Bhardwaj's most simple yet most layered film to date.¹ The Times of India noted the cinematography capturing the seasons of Himachal and described Bhardwaj's own label for the film, a "children's film for adults".¹² The blogger and film writer Jai Arjun, author of the Jabberwock blog, compared Bhardwaj's treatment to the dark fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, with Kapur playing a Himachali Big Bad Wolf.⁴

National Film Award

At the 53rd National Film Awards, the film won the Best Children's Film award for 2005. The citation praised its "poetic and visually stunning interpretation of a story highlighting the values of selflessness and compassion". Producer UTV Motion Pictures and director Vishal Bhardwaj each received a Swarna Kamal and a cash prize of Rs 30,000.⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026