Court (film)

Court
International poster for the film
Directed by	Chaitanya Tamhane
Produced by	Vivek Gomber
Written by	Chaitanya Tamhane
Starring	Vira Sathidar Vivek Gomber Geetanjali Kulkarni Pradeep Joshi Usha Bane Shirish Pawar
Music by	Sambhaji Bhagat
Cinematography	Mrinal Desai
Edited by	Rikhav Desai
Production company	Zoo Entertainment Pvt Ltd
Distributed by	Artscope - Memento Films
Release date	September 4, 2014 (2014-09-04) (Venice Film Festival)
Running time	116 minutes
Country	India
Language	Marathi Hindi Gujarati English

Court is a 2014 Indian independent legal drama film, written and directed by Chaitanya Tamhane in his directorial debut. Featuring a cast of newcomers, the film examines the Indian legal system through the trial of an ageing folk singer at a Sessions Court in Mumbai.

Court premiered at the 71st Venice International Film Festival on 4 September 2014, where it won the Best Film in the Horizons category and the Luigi De Laurentiis (Lion Of The Future) award for Tamhane. Jay Weissberg of Variety described the film as "an impressive debut that flays alive India’s judicial system thanks to an intelligent, superbly understated script." The film went on to win 18 other awards at film festivals, including honours at the Mumbai, Vienna, Antalya, and Singapore film festivals. In 2015, the film won the Best Feature Film award at the 62nd National Film Awards, which honoured films released in 2014.

Court theatrically released in India on 17 April 2015. The film was selected as India's official submission for the 88th Annual Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category but it was not nominated.

The idea for the film occurred to Tamhane in 2011, after he had just finished travelling to festivals with his debut short film, Six Strands. He thought about the idea of a realistic courtroom drama in an Indian setting and at the insistence of his friend Vivek Gomber, an actor he had previously worked with, he set about writing the script.