Govind Nihalani

Govind Nihalani Biography

Govind Nihalani is a critically well acclaimed director of Bollywood during 1980’s and 1990’s, whose movies always win many awards including National awards and International film festival awards. He is famous for parallel cinema giving less significance to commercialism, yet able to create great sensation and awareness among common man. Surprisingly his movies become successful at box office too, though he uses less commercial actors on screen. Movies like Aakrosh and Aarth satya are the best instances for his versatility and creativity on celluloid and those movies created almost 3 decades back on silver screen are not easily forgettable! The recent news is that Govind Nihalani is in the final touch up of the sequel of police story, Ardh satya. He is most known for socially relevant films that contain some ideal message to society.

Nihalani was born on 19 August 1940 in Sind provinces, now in Karachi. He graduated in cinematography from the Shree Jaya Chamrajendra polytechnic in Bangalore in 1962. Then he joined as an assistant of V.K.Murthy. He has been associated with Oscar winning movie Gandhi in 1982 and many of the earliest films of Satyajit Ray. As a director, Govind Nihalani’s first movie was Aakrosh. This critically well acclaimed movie consisted for a row of talented actors of parallel cinema of 70’s and 80’s. Om Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Amrish Puri and Smita Patel made the screen live with their powerful acting skills and script also helped a lot in delivering the best of these actors. This movie was based on a real story which was rewritten to a film script by Vijay Tendulkar. This movie won several international awards including Golden Peacock for best film at the International Film Festival of India held in New Delhi in 1981. His second movie Vijeta starred Sashi Kapoor and Rekha in the leading roles and the movie is based on Army. His third movie again, created history on screen. This movie was none other than Arth Satya, the movie capturing the real life of a police officer and Om Puri put full life to the leading role.

His other memorable movies include - Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa, Dev, Thakshak and Deham.  He has also worked on a few tele-serials as well.

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Updated: May 06, 2014