Silence! The Court Is in Session (1971)

• 83%
• 1971
• Satyadev Dubey
• Amrish Puri
• Amol Palekar
• Sulabha Deshpande

It is set as a play-within-a-play, where a traveling amateur theater group makes an unscheduled stop at a village. There, to pass time the cast members stage a mock trial, of a fellow cast member, Miss Leela Benare, who is unmarried, sexually exploited and had earlier aborted a child to keep her honor. During the course of the play, she is charged of child abortion, and as the charges get more vicious and personal, she can't take them anymore, as she is reminded of her predicament. Finally she breaks down, revealing the true story behind it all, and also the hegemony and hypocrisy of male cast members comes into the light, who like their counterpart in the society are not blameless themselves, while they still find it easy to point fingers at a woman's character.