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The Battle Royale
A Story of Political Redemption
Filmmaker
87 min | 2025, India, Germany | Bengali, English and Hindi with English Subtitles
In December 2023, TMC MP Mahua Moitra was expelled from Indian Parliament on allegations of cash for query: financial inducements to raise questions against businessman Gautam Adani. She denied it. There was no evidence. The House voted her out regardless.
What followed was the battle for Krishnanagar.
The Battle Royale tracks Mahua Moitra’s re-election campaign in the high profile constituency of Krishnanagar as she fights for her political survival and redemption. Pitted against Moitra are the BJP’s Amrita Roy – the ‘Rajmata’ of Krishnanagar, and the CPI(M)/INC candidate, S.M. Sadi.
The Battle Royale is part of Election Diaries 2024, a series of 9 documentaries produced by CeMIS (Centre for Modern Indian Studies) that reflect the anxieties, the hopes and the resilience of Indian democracy over the 2024 elections.
The film screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.
Filmmaker
Lalit Vachani
Lalit Vachani is a documentary filmmaker, editor, lecturer and research scholar at CeMIS (Centre for Modern Indian Studies) at the University of Göttingen. His documentaries include In Search of Gandhi (2007) and The Salt Stories (2009) which follow the trail of Gandhi’s salt march in Narendra’s Modi’s Gujarat; The Play Goes On (2005) on the leftist street theatre group, Jana Natya Manch; An Ordinary Election (2015), an in-depth study of an Indian election campaign by a new political party – the AAP (Aam Aadmi Party); The Boy in the Branch (1993) and The Men in the Tree (2002) which document the ideology and the growth of the RSS and Hindu nationalism, and Prisoner No. 626710 is Present (2024), about the Citizenship Amendment Act, student protests and the incarceration of Umar Khalid.
