Ranked #40 of 100
Nishant
निशांत · 1975
A schoolteacher's wife is abducted by a landlord family and nobody in the village will move — until everyone moves at once.
- Director
- Shyam Benegal
- Year
- 1975
- Genre
- Drama
- Cast
- Girish Karnad, Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah, Amrish Puri
Why it's at number 40
The final mob sequence is one of the most frightening endings in Indian cinema.
A schoolteacher's wife is abducted by a landlord family and nobody in the village will move — until everyone moves at once.
Nishant sits in the 1970s alongside Sholay and Deewaar — a decade this canon treats as foundational.
The Bollywood 100The essentials
- Directed by Shyam Benegal — also responsible for Manthan, Ankur, Bhumika.
- Released in 1975, in the 1970s — see everything else from that decade.
- Filed under Drama.
- Read more on Wikipedia, check the full crew on IMDb, or find a legal stream via JustWatch.
Film record Wikipedia — Nishant (1975) · data last revised 9 August 2026 · title, year, director and cast are read from that article; this site keeps no independent print record and does not claim one
Editorial The ranking and the case made for each placement — not a measurement · last revised 9 August 2026 · signed by Amit Sharma · the scoring is published in full so the machinery can be argued with, not just the result
No box-office figure, rating or audience score is printed on this page, because none has been independently verified for this film. The dated, sourced money figures the site does stand behind are on the box office page.
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