Sightlines · reception
How Salaam Bombay! was received
1988 · Mira Nair · Salaam Bombay! on Sightlines
The arc
It arrived a fully-formed sensation — Caméra d'Or at Cannes 1988 and an Oscar nomination for a debut feature — and its stature has only hardened since, now sitting as a foundational text of Indian independent cinema and the film every Mira Nair retrospective starts with.
What’s debated
The perennial fight is Salaam Bombay! vs Slumdog Millionaire — cinephiles love pointing out Nair did the Bombay-street-kids story twenty years earlier, with real street children, and arguing over which film humanizes and which exoticizes.
Its footprint
Its afterlife is literally institutional: the film's proceeds founded the Salaam Baalak Trust, which still runs shelters for street children in Mumbai and Delhi — one of the rare cases where a movie's legacy is a working charity rather than a quote.
Where it stands
A 'you must have seen this' of Indian arthouse cinema — the debut that put Mira Nair on the map and a fixture of world-cinema syllabi and best-debuts lists.
Did you know? The cast were largely real Bombay street children trained in a special workshop before shooting, and it became only the second Indian film ever nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, after Mother India (1957).
Named by the director
- Pixote (1981) — Nair has cited Héctor Babenco's film about São Paulo street kids, with its cast of real children, as the model that convinced her Salaam Bombay! could be made with actual street children.