• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Dec 15, 2025 Web Exclusive By Kaveh Jalinous Photography by The Criterion Collection

It feels like every time legendary Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair has been in the news this year, it’s been in relation to her son (and the next mayor of New York City), Zohran Mamdani. Hopefully, the people learning about this familial connection will also seek out Nair’s excellent body of work, spanning decades and featuring works that tell stories from around the globe. Her skills and sensibilities particularly shine in her feature film debut, Salaam Bombay!, a confident and assured film that expertly highlights the difficulty of surviving in the shadows of city life, to heartbreaking effect.

Salaam Bombay! follows Krishna (Shafiq Syed), an 11-year-old who works for a circus company, earning scraps to repay his brother for breaking his motorbike. When the circus ringleader gives him some money to buy him food, Krishna uses it to buy a ticket to Mumbai, where he hopes to earn more money to repay his debt quicker. There, he works at a tea stall, living on the street and forging relationships with members of the city’s underworld—most notably, a drug dealer named Chillum (Raghubir Yadav) and a prostitute named “Sweet Sixteen” (Chanda Sharma). As Krishna becomes more immersed in the injustices of city life, the possibility of his returning to his family becomes less probable.

Salaam Bombay! is rooted in and influenced by the Italian neorealist movement of the 1940s. The film is rooted in authenticity. Nair’s framing is intimate yet expansive at the same time, capturing both Krishna’s immediate world and the comings and goings of his pocket within Mumbai. The film balances its direct narrative with environmental storytelling; we learn more about the inhabitants’ struggle through Krishna’s story and the story of those around him. The film is an unflinching look at poverty, survival and exploitation within the city, and the plot is fairly relentless. Through Krishna’s actions, though, there’s a thread of resilience that contrasts the hopelessness of his environment and economic situation.

The film often feels like it’s in conversation with Vittorio de Sica’s landmark film, Bicycle Thieves (1948), due to the intimacy and realism of the stories, as well as the ways they steer clear of any sense of melodrama. This is further animated by Salaam Bombay!’s excellent cast of non-actors, who animate their characters in stunning and captivating fashion. As hard as Nair’s film is to watch, it’s also impossible to look away from. Sandi Sissel’s cinematography is stunning; every shot is framed perfectly, a mosaic of different colors and tones. The film’s polychromatic nature further marks the juxtaposition between the film’s visuals and the darker, more testing themes that lie within its story. The film’s final, sustained shot is one of the most powerful I’ve seen in recent memory.

It’s truly no surprise that Salaam Bombay! won Cannes’ Caméra d’Or award in 1988, an award given to the festival’s best feature debut film. The Criterion Collection’s new release is a great reason to revisit or watch this work for the first time (if not for the marvelous 4K restoration alone). Nair’s involvement in the Collection’s release is felt in the supplements. Among the best: new commentaries with Nair and Sissel and a conversation between Nair and the film’s composer, L. Subramaniam. Archival interviews with the film’s principal cast round out this excellent release.

(www.criterion.com/films/33028-salaam-bombay)