Ranked #1 of 100
Sholay
शोले · 1975
The Curry Western that became the country's shared memory. Two small-time crooks, a one-armed ex-cop and the greatest villain Hindi cinema ever wrote. Every line is a proverb now.
- Director
- Ramesh Sippy
- Year
- 1975
- Genre
- Action · Drama
- Cast
- Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, Amjad Khan
Why it's at number 1
It is the only Indian film that plays continuously in the national bloodstream — dialogue, sound design, silhouette.
The Curry Western that became the country's shared memory. Two small-time crooks, a one-armed ex-cop and the greatest villain Hindi cinema ever wrote. Every line is a proverb now.
Sholay sits in the 1970s alongside Deewaar and Anand — a decade this canon treats as foundational.
The Bollywood 100The essentials
- Directed by Ramesh Sippy.
- Released in 1975, in the 1970s — see everything else from that decade.
- Filed under Action, Drama.
- Read more on Wikipedia, check the full crew on IMDb, or find a legal stream via JustWatch.
Film record Wikipedia — Sholay (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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