Best movies like Punascha

Set in the turbulent 1930s, this is the story of a poor Chinese hawker selling his merchandise, Chinese silk, in the streets of Calcutta. This was the time when China was repulsing a brutal attack of militarist Japan and when an outraged Rabindranath Tagore wrote to his friend in Japan, the great poet Noguchi: “I wish your countrymen, whom I love so much, not success but remorse”. This film holds the dubious distinction of being the first to be banned (though temporarily) in independent India.

A father living on the fringes of a village believes that working is a fool's errand, for the lord takes what little the workers make. When a young woman enters their home, tensions begin to rise and their idle life is threatened. The film is based on the story ‘Kafan’ by Munshi Premchand

Josef, Sunder, Ramu and Aziz are imprisoned on false charges. Filled with rage, they escape from prison, vowing to seek revenge.

Subhash is a photographer from the city, who has come to take pictures of some old temples and ruins in a village. Ruins fascinate him. While in the village, he gets acquainted with a young woman, Jamini, who has had her heart broken in the past, by another visitor from the big city. Will history repeat itself, or will she find a way out of the ruins at last?

The spirit of a condemned 20-year-old student wanders through time, linking together four stories of people struggling for survival in this gritty meditation on poverty, natural disaster and political strife in India. A middle-class family's home is no match for the monsoons, while another clan's morality is compromised when famine strikes. Young boys smuggle rice, and politicians pity the poor while living in the lap of luxury.

Indian documentary about Indian film history and P. K. Nair, the founder of the National Film Archive of India and guardian of Indian cinema. He built the archive can by can in a country where the archiving of cinema was considered unimportant.

This is a simple, straightforward tale about the rise and fall of human civilization that focuses solely on four characters: a farmer (Naseeruddin Shah), a weaver (Om Puri), a trader (M.K. Raina), and a woman (Shabana Azmi). At the beginning of the story, the workers in a decaying village are offered food and water if they work for the local lords. The farmer and the weaver refuse. The farmer grows food for them both, and the weaver creates textiles that uses to barter with an itinerant trader. One day a frightened, lonely woman arrives on the scene and she is taken in by the two men. She cooks and cleans, and before long becomes a source of contention. Meanwhile, the trader is observing these events from the sidelines.

Ranjit is a young man who has been assured a lucrative job. All he has to do is turn up for the interview dressed in a western style suit, but all the city laundries are on strike that morning, and his only suit is dirty.

The bravery of Lieutenant Triveni Singh, a young soldier who gave his own life to protect over 300 people who were caught in the cross firing at the Jammu railway station in a terrorist attack in 2004.

Titli, a rich heiress, gets acid attacked time and again but is saved by Badsha, who swears to protect her. They eventually fall in love.

The film deals with how a teacher along with his students fight corruption.

A corrupt politician bribes an honest and courageous police officer to get his way. However, little does he know that the policeman joins hands with him only to ruin his political

Shakthi is a politician's chauffeur who is always misunderstood by his father and his love interest, Manasi. As he is uneducated and struggles to make a mark professionally, his personal life witnesses a surprising turn.

Sujay, Ajay and Bijay are three siblings who share a close bond and can go to any length to protect each other. However, when Sujay is killed by his own boss, Bijay sets out to exact revenge.

Rana owns a studio. He is in search of a model to work for his studio. Raja, his photographer, brings in Tina. She establishes herself as a good model. Tina is smitten with Rama and wants to wed him.

A film actress misses her train on her way to a shoot and is stranded in the middle of nowhere. She takes up shelter with the local Station Master and soon bonds with the place and its people.

Bhuvan Shome is a lonely widower, a proud old man and a strict disciplinarian. Looking back on the trodden path, strewn with staunch determination and drab attitudes, Bhuvan Shome, a thoroughly unenchanted man, seeks escape in a holiday.

A young man still to find a place in the sun puts up an innocent bluff to a young girl he chances upon. They meet frequently since then. Bluffs continue to pile up. There is no way out. In a desperate bid the young man tries to break the wealth barrier. His friend, well placed in life, cautions him. He turns a deaf ear. The inevitable happens. The young man grows wiser but pays heavily for it.

Introverted girl whose routine life brightens up when she falls for Rohit, one of her fellow college mates. Will they be together?

A pre-teenager servant boy dies of carbon monoxide poisoning on a cold winter night. He was employed by a young working Calcutta couple with a small boy of their own. Taking money from a neighbor's friendly daughter, he slipped away to watch a movie on a cold winter night. Finding his usual sleeping corner below the stairs too cold, he bolts himself inside the kitchen, where a fire was burning. The next morning we witness a powerful discovery scene like on the morning after Macbeth's murder. The door is forced open and we see the commotion in the apartment block which is the stage of the drama. Who is responsible?

Shasanka is a retired teacher who lives with his wife and two daughters. The family is thrown into an uproar after he goes out for a walk and disappears from their lives. Each member of the family reviews her final hours and days with him to try and discover what, if anything led to his disappearance.

After her husband passes away at a regressive Shyambazar household, progressive Bandana falls in love with her son's painting mentor, Sudipto Sorcar. However, due to Titli Chatterjee's mother's objection, Bandana gives up on her love and starts living at the orphanage.

A college reunion brings Niranjan back into Shamaa's life and gives her the confidence to live her life with a fresh new start. Sahela Re is a mature love story that teaches us to accept the changes that relationships go through during different phases of life.

The tragic story set in the late 1930s, just before famine struck Bengal. It tells of the marriage of a dumpy middle-aged salesman of small goods to a beautiful teenager, and how, after initial days of happiness together, a series of misfortunes strike which slowly embitter the man.

A young, idealistic director arrives in a village to make a picture set during the Great Bengal Famine. It’s a film that he hopes will reveal the problems and privations still current in rural India.

The sudden boom in industrialisation threatens to take away the fertile lands from a village wherein honest, hard-working people work to make a living.

Burning with a desire to be a journalist, a young man gets his chance when a publisher -- the father of a friend -- suggests that he write a story on the daily life of the people in his house (several families worth of people). The material turns out to be too incohesive and abundant to work into a pointed, thematic article, and just when he is about to give up, his younger brother asks him a simple question: "How many coal burners are there in Calcutta?" This triggers an idea for a story about Calcutta's pollution -- and the aspiring journalist dreams of myriads of burner-toting citizens invading the publisher's home demanding redress. Maybe he is finally on the way to a story that matters.

Ek Adhuri Kahani is 1972 Hindi language movie directed by Mrinal Sen, starring Utpal Dutt, Shekhar Chatterjee, Vivek Chatterjee, Aarti Bhattacharya, Shyam and Shobha Sen. It was based on a Bengali story, Gotrantar by Subodh Ghosh.

Shyamal and Vidhyadhar, an old couple, find themselves in a dilemma when they have to leave the house where they spent their entire married life to move into a new one.

A small company advertises for 100 vacancies and 30,000 apply. The applicants are all from the ranks of the poor and there is a virtual riot. Everyone around is seeking for opportunities. Among them are the applicants who desperately need the job, the photographer who is busy seeking a scoop, the village moneylender who is busy exploiting the poor, the ineffective police, the employers who are advertising posts even while a six month old strike has nearly caused the workmen to become destitute. It is a story of society captured in a tiny framework of a small business. Ultimately, the workmen, the unemployed and the farmers all get to gether to protest against this exploitation.

Movie revolves around Saptami and her brother Pancham. Saptami's married life is a disaster as her mother-in-law constantly harasses her. Her in-laws also insult her brother Pancham.

The story revolves around a retired judge, Mr. Sen, living in a farmhouse on the outskirts of the city. The people who stay in the colony are a handful of social outcasts. One day, the judge is found dead under mysterious circumstances, and Byomkesh takes up the case.

An IT professional, Aakash, who leads a near perfect life, and Ananya, an actress, who leads a rather messy, imperfect yet classy life, face turbulent times post marriage as their careers take a drastic positive turn.

A man gives shelter to a beautiful girl who has been a victim of rape and has also witnessed a murder. He gives her hope to live again and they fall in love with each other.

Sagar falls in love with Sakhi who is a dominant zamindar's daughter. Will the two ever unite?