Team FC
A satire on various forms of government and corporate corruption, Kundan Shah's film could not have chosen a better city than Bombay, where everyone is in everyone's business, where crookery and profiteering are rewarded and honesty remanded.
Part two of Mani Ratnam's "Terror Trilogy" placed an inter-faith couple (Manisha Koirala and Arvind Swamy) at the heart of communal violence post-1992, showcasing the changing face of a city which had, by and large, been a melting pot.
These gangsters are panicky, the cops on their tails are determined, and there's no glamour. Ram Gopal Varma's definitive Mumbai crime film turned the camera on the grunts of the criminal world and the fictive idea of justice in such a space.
Anurag Kashyap's dramatisation of the 1993 serial blasts and the investigation that followed brought to screens the Bombay of the streets and the alleys, of neighbourhoods that didn't have basic facilities, and of an organised crime syndicate that had fed a terror network.
A privileged slacker is made to sit up and take notice of just what's so magical about his hometown (and life) in Ayan Mukerji's debut film, which explores much of Mumbai by taking Aisha (Konkona Sensharma) and Sid (Ranbir Kapoor) through the streets.
While little of it was shot in the city, Anurag Kashyap's period film was essentially an ode to Bombay's striving working class, made up mostly of migrants, and an indictment of the capitalist interests that held power in it.
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