The Chess Players

A colorful period drama about colonialism and indigenous culture, the film is set in 1856 at the court of Wajid Ali Shah in Lucknow, the capital of Oudh featuring two parallel narratives. The first, based on Premchand’s short story, shows the interminable games of the ancient Indian chess played by two hookah-smoking landlords Mir Roshan Ali and Mirza Sajjad Ali who are ignorant of their wives as well as of a different kind of chess played by the British. The other dramatizes the conflict between Wajid Ali Shah and General James Outram who represents Lord Dalhousie’s treacherously implemented annexation policies. Wajid Ali is shown as a politically weak and effete figure who prefers arts to the matters of state or politics. (Venice International Film Festival)