Film
Liar's Dice
Liar's Dice follows a mother and daughter on a desperate journey through India searching for the girl's missing father. Director Anurag Kashyap crafts a grimy, unsentimental portrait of poverty and survival, where kindness is rare and trust is currency. It's unflinching cinema for viewers willing to sit with discomfort.
If you liked this
The Road2009
A parent and child navigating a hostile world with nothing but each other. Brutal, claustrophobic, and anchored by a performance that captures desperation without melodrama.
But Relentlessly grim. Adapted from Cormac McCarthy, it offers no relief and assumes you're okay with that.

Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 12012
Also directed by Kashyap. A sprawling crime saga that finds dark humour and humanity in violence and betrayal across rural India. Absolutely magnetic.
But Nearly six hours across two films, violent, deliberately provocative, and structured in a way that demands your full attention.

Udaan2010
A young man returns home from boarding school to a suffocating family and a dying industrial town. Quiet, observant, and brilliantly acted—about powerlessness and small rebellion.
But It's introspective and slow. If you want plot momentum, this will feel like watching paint dry.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Liar's Dice
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Stalker1979
Both films use physical journey as the engine for spiritual and moral questions. Both treat landscape and silence as characters. Both understand that the real destination is always internal.
Tarkovsky's meditative science fiction about a guide leading two men through a mysterious zone. Hypnotic, philosophical, shot in long, patient takes. It's about desire and the lies we tell ourselves.
But 163 minutes, Soviet, almost no plot. If you need narrative momentum or conventional cinematography, you will find this unbearable.

More like this (7)
Slumdog Millionaire2008
Also set across India's underclass, using a quiz show to unpack a life shaped by survival. Visually dazzling and emotionally direct.
But It wraps poverty in music and narrative sweep in ways that can feel designed for Western audiences expecting redemption.

Dark Water2005
A girl abandoned to a widow's ashram in 1930s India. Devastatingly human, with a slow accumulation of small horrors and a genuine moral question at its heart.
But Heavy on caste and religious politics. It's meditative rather than propulsive, which some will find distant.

Barfi!2012
A deaf, mute man navigates love and identity in Kolkata. A counterweight to Liar's Dice—playful, affectionate, warm—but with real substance underneath.
But It's a Bollywood film with a whimsical tone that could feel saccharine if you're in the mood for something harder.

Article 152019
Ayushmann Khurrana as a police officer investigating a crime in rural Uttar Pradesh, unraveling caste and corruption. Angry, necessary cinema with a clear conscience.
But It's a message film first and a thriller second—some scenes feel engineered to make a point rather than earned.

Peepli Live2010
A farmer threatening suicide becomes media sensation. Satirical and observant about how India consumes tragedy, with unexpected tenderness underneath the rage.
But The tonal shifts are abrupt. It swings between dark comedy and genuine pathos in ways that don't always land.

The Florida Project2017
Both follow a mother and child trying to survive on almost nothing, but The Florida Project refuses the grimness—it insists on the child's capacity for wonder. They're arguing with each other about what poverty looks like when you're living it.
A six-year-old girl lives in a motel in budget Florida with her struggling mother. Shot in bright colour, with a child's perspective—joyful and devastating at once. The best recent film about American poverty.
But It's American, contemporary, and formally quite different. If you expect realism in the style of Liar's Dice, the visual beauty might feel like dishonesty.

Caché2005
Both films are built on lies—what characters claim versus what they do. Both suggest that survival and morality are sometimes incompatible, and that we're all capable of the cruelty we condemn in others.
A Parisian family receives mysterious videotapes. Haneke's masterpiece about guilt, complicity, and what we refuse to see. Intellectually rigorous but viscerally unsettling.
But Deliberately frustrating. It withholds answers, doesn't resolve, and leaves you searching for meaning in ambiguity. Some will find this pretentious.

People
Cast
Nawazuddin SiddiquiNawazuddin
Geetanjali ThapaKamala- Manya GuptaManya
Murari KumarHotel Boy
Harish KhannaDelhi Hotel Owner
Directing
- Geetu MohandasDirector
Writing
- Geetu MohandasWriter
Production
- Geetu MohandasCo-Producer
- Rajeev RaviCo-Producer
- Ajay RaiProducer
- Alan McAlexProducer
- Oldmonks DesignPublicist