Slumdog Millionaire

The tale of Jamal Patel who enters India's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and knows the answers to some very obscure questions despite being an orphan of the Bombay (Mumbai) slums He is suspected of cheating but under pretty severe interrogation he reveals that all the answers have come from incidents from this life of appalling poverty. It is almost Dickensian in its degradation - there is a Fagin type character that he and his brother Salim falls in with, but while Jamal escapes to a reasonable life - obsessed though he is with fellow street urchin Latika, Salim becomes a gangster. Jamal is an outsider in all kinds of ways - a Muslim, an orphan, a char wallah at a call centre - less than nothing, but driven by the love of a beautiful woman. The film is all the more remarkable for the acting of the children who play the younger versions of the three central characters. For once the violence depicted seem not to be gratuitous - but necessary to emphasise the appalling nature of these children's lives - the by products of a City being transformed into a capitalist power house.