It has made quite an impression at international film festivals and now Dhobi Ghat is getting ready for it’s theatrical release in January of next year. Written and directed by Kiran Rao, the film stars Monica Dogra, Kriti Malhotra, Prateik, and Aamir Khan. About the film the director wrote,”Dhobi Ghat is my homage to Mumbai and its people – people on the trains, in the boats, stuck in traffic, perched on the construction sites, sitting by the sea, thinking of tomorrow.”
Story:
Inside a taxi in the pouring rain of Mumbai, an amateur video camera is shooting the grey city through the misted windows. The cab driver strikes up a conversation with the shy girl behind the camera, and they find out that they are from neighboring towns back home in U.P. The brief encounter creates a small space of belonging.
Shai (Monica Dogra), an affluent investment banker on a sabbatical in Mumbai meets Arun (Aamir Khan), a gifted painter at the opening of his new show. Arun and Shai spend a night together, which later Arun cannot explain and Shai cannot forget. The very next morning they part ways, almost sure they will never meet again.
Munna (Prateik), the young and beautiful laundry boy (dhobi) who delivers clothes to Shai’s house, aspires to be a film actor. When he learns of Shai’s hobby of photography he agrees to show her the ‘real’ city in exchange for her shooting his portfolio. Shai discovers the city through his eyes and her lens, and an unlikely friendship develops as Munna can&’t stop himself from falling in love with her.
Meanwhile Arun finds a new apartment where he can resume his silent, reclusive life. In the process of settling in, he stumbles upon a secret that at first he is ready to dismiss, but later finds more and more absorbing; a secret that will find its way into his heart.
Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries) is the quiet and stirring story of four disparate characters who slip away from the comforts of familiar moorings and are inexorably drawn into compelling relationships. Fragments of their experience – seen through a na
