Lipstick Under My BurkhaMovies like Lipstick Under My Burkha
- Key Features:
- Female empowerment, Social commentary, Cultural conflict, Forbidden love, Cultural expectations, Rebellion, Friendship, Self-discovery, Indian cinema, Independent film, Sexuality-moderate
- Tone:
- humorous, earnest, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Independent film enthusiasts, Feminist film viewers, Social issue drama fans
- Emotional Arc:
- Frustration → Defiance → Liberation
Lipstick Under My Burkha

Four ordinary women, inflicted by silly societal norms, have to steal, lie, cheat and hide in order to lead the lives that they rightfully deserve.
Lipstick Under My Burkha
A woman threatens to leave her husband unless he installs a toilet in their home. To win back her love and respect, he heads out on a journey to fight against the backward society.

In the arid landscape of Rajasthan, four women navigate their way through personal and cultural difficulties.

A young woman's life is shattered into pieces when her husband slaps her at a party, causing her to question what this relationship stands for.

A sexual assault victim, unjustly tried for the attempted murder of her attacker, is defended by a retired lawyer who challenges India's rape culture.

Three ordinary air hostesses from Mumbai embark on a journey to pursue their dreams but find themselves caught up in unexpected misfortunes.

An aspiring avant-garde composer rapes a fashion model. When she takes him to court, she's slut-shamed by the defense and the man is exonerated. But justice will be served.

After her husband loses his job, a housewife from a middle-class, conservative family in Calcutta gets a job as a salesperson.

Badrinath is looking for a typical bride; Vaidehi is looking for an independent life. Together they must break with tradition and redefine their role

Bitti Mishra is a bohemian Bareilly girl who falls deeply in love with Pritam Vidrohi, an author because she admires his progressive way of thinking. Finding him though proves to be as hard as looking for a needle in the haystack. So Bitti seeks the help of the local printing press-owner, Chirag Dubey on her journey of love.

Rani, a 24-year-old homely girl, decides to go on her honeymoon alone when her fiancé calls off the wedding. Traveling around Europe, she finds joy, makes friends, and gains new-found independence.

A journey of three restless young people who junk the society's syllabus for finding love and decide to follow their heart.

An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.

Three married womanisers cheat on their wives. In order to catch them red-handed, their sceptic wives enlist a detective who specialises in investigating extramarital relationships.

A gay cop and a lesbian teacher enter a sham marriage to pacify their families but find that relationships — both real and fake — aren't all that easy.

Sweety has to contend with her over-enthusiastic family that wants her to get married but the ultimate truth is that her love might not find acceptance in her family and society.

A stranger in the city asks questions no one has asked before. Known only by his initials, the man's innocent questions and childlike curiosity take him on a journey of love, laughter and letting go.

An anthology of four stories that sheds light on modern relationships from the viewpoint of the Indian woman.

A government scheme sees newly widowed Santosh inherit her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a low-caste girl is found raped and murdered, she is pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.

A small-town girl finally realizes her dream of becoming a famous supermodel but soon finds out that there's a price for her glamorous new life.

Bauji resists his daughter's request to let her marry the man she loves as the neighbours incessantly shame him. However, his opinion changes after he meets him and he decides to change his viewpoint.

A lonely 40-ish man, likely to remain a bachelor, has a chance to find the love of his life when he falls for a vivacious young woman.

Madhukar and Parthavi fall head over heels in love with each other, but the fact that they belong to different castes of society, becomes an obstacle in their romance. The lovers dare to go against societal norms and battle all odds for the sake of love.

A woman tries to win back her husband when she discovers he's keeping a model for a mistress.

A slim uneducated guy is pressured into an arranged marriage with an overweight college girl. The mismatched couple is challenged to compete in the annual wife-carrying race.

Owing to the condition that the girls of the neighborhood should be treated like one's own sister, Gattu works to capture Binny's heart and the approval of his community.

In 2001, somewhere in rural India, two young brides get accidentally swapped on a train. In the ensuing chaos, they both encounter a host of colourful characters, resulting in hilarious and unexpected consequences.

Nishant starts dating Charu while his roommates Rajat and Vikrant already have girlfriends in Neha and Rhea respectively. Trouble starts when the guys feel that their girlfriends are dominating them.

Gym-freak brat Rocky falls in love with Rani, who comes from a well-educated Bengali family. Being from polar opposite worlds, the two decide to switch their families to adjust to each other's cultures and backgrounds and to know if their marriage will survive. Rocky and Rani are trapped in a world where they are united by love but divided by families and the ultimate question is will they fit in?

Dev and Maya are both married to different people. Settled into a life of domestic ritual, and convinced that they are happy in their respective relationships, they still yearn for something deeper and more meaningful, which is precisely what they find in each other.

Four friends from a sleepy little village in Punjab share a common dream: to go to England. Their problem is that they have neither the visa nor the ticket. A soldier alights from a train one day, and their lives change. He gives them a soldier's promise: He will take them to the land of their dreams. What follows is a hilarious and heartwarming tale of a perilous journey through the desert and the sea, but most crucially through the hinterlands of their mind.

A social drama about four marginalized prostitutes in Marrakech and their complex relations with their families and society at large.

An accident on a bridge ties together three young men from different social classes, sparking a course of events that will forever alter their lives.

Ludo is about the butterfly effect and how, despite all the chaos and crowd of the world, all our lives are inextricably connected. From a resurfaced sex tape to a rogue suitcase of money, four wildly different stories overlap at the whims of fate, chance and one eccentric criminal.

After running away from home in search of movie stardom, a village girl rises to become a prominent sex symbol.

When her father is killed in a road accident, Trishna's family expect her to provide for them. The rich son of an entrepreneur starts to restlessly pursue her affections, but are his intentions as pure as they seem?

The paths of four dream-chasing college friends cross with an array of colourful characters, from a tough-talking Punjabi female don to a Jugaad Baaz college watchman. Mayhem ensues.

Four young friends decide to work together when one of them comes up with an innovative and lucrative business plan. But their lives begin to deteriorate when their personal issues surface.

Wanting to earn fame and fortune, a small time lawyer files a PIL for an infamous hit-and-run, and thus learns what it really is like to be a lawyer.

Badru hopes her volatile husband will reform if he stops drinking. But when his rage goes too far, she and her mom boldly, albeit clumsily, seek revenge.

A group of Mumbai up-and-comers search for love and struggle for success in this ensemble drama that centers on an eager young call centre executive.

The son of a wealthy businessman finds solace in drugs and alcohol when he breaks up with his childhood love.

A budding director endeavors to research a merciless gangster for making a film on gangsterism. But his secret attempts to conduct the research fail when he gets caught for snooping.

Arun is a reclusive and lonely modern art painter. Shai is an American banker who is on a visit to Mumbai. Munna is a washerboy also living near Arun and Yasmin. The movie is about these four characters from different class of society and how the lives of four characters are intertwined.

Isa, Alice, Léa and Nina, linked by their Sephardic families as much as by their friendship, share their lives between love affairs, a beauty institute under fiscal control, children to raise, an undocumented Moroccan nanny to marry, repeated diets, family and religious holidays to honor, but before being beautiful, their biggest challenge is to be themselves.

In an effort to improve feminine hygiene, a machine that creates low-cost biodegradable sanitary pads is installed in a rural village in Northern India. Using the machine, a group of local women is employed to produce and sell pads, offering them newfound independence and helping to destigmatize menstruation for all.

A vibrant, hopelessly romantic physiotherapist meets a handsome young Rajput prince who is the complete opposite of her – and is engaged to someone else.

An immigrant Indian mother fights the Norwegian foster care system and legal machinery to win back custody of her children.

A poverty-stricken woman raises her sons through many trials and tribulations. But no matter the struggles, always sticks to her own moral code.

Three henpecked friends try to escape their unhappy marriages by seeking out some extramarital fun, only to end up being blackmailed.

Poonam, a traditionally brought-up young woman, is to marry Prem, a groom chosen by her uncle. Poonam and Prem's faith and love are to be tested however, when an accident occurs and Poonam might be scarred for life.

Duped and sold to a brothel, a young woman fearlessly reclaims her power, using underworld connections to preside over the world she was once a pawn in.

Childhood sweethearts Lalita and Shekhar wish to get married someday. However, Shekhar's growing suspicions about Lalita coupled with his conniving father's antics threaten to tear them apart.

In a barren, arranged marriage to an amateur swami who seeks enlightenment through celibacy, Radha's life takes an irresistible turn when her beautiful young sister-in-law seeks to free herself from the confines of her own loveless marriage.

Desperate to find employment, Karam picks up a job as ‘Pooja’ at a call center for sex chats, keeping most people in his life in the dark about the nature of his work. How long can he keep it up before everyone including his girlfriend and father find out?

Mrs. Bakshi is eager to find suitors for her four unmarried daughters when a family friend introduces them to handsome American Will Darcy. A Bollywood-style modern adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel.

In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha's routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend. A trip to a beach town allows them to find a space for their desires to manifest.

Events in India's history — from the Emergency and the famous Cricket World Cup win to the Punjab riots — unfold from the perspective of an innocent Sikh man Laal Singh Chaddha, a person with a low IQ but high optimism. Laal is able to achieve everything under the sun but his childhood love continues to elude him.

Four friends are facing problems like infidelity, infertility and disease. But together, they can solve every single problem.

A 22 year-old Bangladeshi-Italian Muslim boy meets a beautiful, exciting Italian girl who makes him re-analyze his beliefs and culture.

Four lives intersect along the Ganges: a low caste boy in hopeless love, a daughter ridden with guilt of a sexual encounter ending in a tragedy, a hapless father with fading morality, and a spirited child yearning for a family, long to escape the moral constructs of a small-town.

A shy simple traditional girl leaves her family in India for her new husband in London, where she meets a shameless flirt and a complicated party girl.

A man and a woman come from two very different cultural backgrounds, and decide that they won't get married until they convince their parents. As feared, differences between the families pose a hurdle.

Upon realizing the extent to which women are affected by their menses, a man sets out to create a sanitary pad machine and to provide inexpensive sanitary pads to the women of rural India.

Not wanting the same fate as befell her sisters, Sona Mishra re-locates to Mumbai to try to make a living making movies, but she soon finds that the path she has chosen is not an easy one.

A Hindu man and a Muslim woman fall in love in a small village and move to Mumbai, where they have two children. However, growing religious tensions and erupting riots threaten to tear the family apart.

At a prestigious all-male university, three friends seek love outside of the school grounds; at the same time, a newly-hired music teacher seeks to befriend and loosen up the militantly strict headmaster.

A spirited girl finds herself caught in a complicated love triangle while burdened with societal and familial pressures.

A smooth and charming conman, Ricky Bahl, cons girls for a living but finally meets his match is this fun-filled "ROM-CON."

A young IPS officer’s new posting in rural India has him confronting caste disparities and uncomfortable truths in the face of a gruesome crime. When three girls go missing in the fictional village of Lalgaon, two of them are found dead and there is no trace of the third one. Where is she and who is responsible for this heinous act?

When two cash-strapped UK-based Indians become male escorts amid an economic downturn, money flows right in but everything else in their lives starts falling apart.

A portrait of the flaws and peculiarities of four type of girls living in different districts of Rome.

A drama centered on two women who engage in a dangerous relationship during South Africa's apartheid era.

Three best friends juggle life as 20-somethings in Mumbai, where romance, ambition and heartbreak collide with the addictive draw of social media.

Three people, each having different aspirations from life, are caught in a tangle of emotions and don’t know the way out. There’s a husband and wife with love eroding from their life. And there’s a single, happy-go-lucky dude who falls in love with the wife.

Mauji stays in a village near Delhi with his wife Mamta, father and mother. Varun works at a shop that sells sewing machines, owned by Bansal and his son Prashant. Both have a habit of ill-treating Mauji and make him do fun antics. When Prashant gets married, Bansal invites Mauji and his entire family. Mamta feels humiliated when she sees Mauji being asked to imitate a dog by the Bansals.

An unconventional woman, gains immense success in her professional life but things take a turn when she meets a guy, who wants to be a house husband.

After her stepdaughter is sexually assaulted at a party, a furious mother sets out to destroy the lives of the four perpetrators who walked free.

The film captures the daily duality of three young Palestinian women in Tel Aviv, caught between hometown tradition and big city abandon, and the price they must pay for a lifestyle that seems obvious to many: the freedom to work, party, have sex, and choose.

Veera, a fire-cracker of a girl who lives in a small village but dreams of playing cricket in the big league. Rohan is an accomplished captain of a county cricket team in England. Rohan returns to India to captain his father's cricket team which has been losing for the last 8 years. In a Village where girls don't play Cricket, Veera has to put on a put on a turban & beard to live her dream.

A privileged Delhi socialite hires a middle-class student to pose as her boyfriend to maintain her social status. Their pretense becomes complicated when genuine feelings develop between them.

In 1900s India, Calcuttan zamindar Devdas Mukherjee — unable to marry his lover — takes up alcohol and the company of a courtesan to alleviate the pain.

A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.

A newly-wed man discovers that his wife is in love with another man and decides to unite them. Ignoring the ridicule he might have to face for this, he takes his wife to Italy in search of her love.

When photos of her at a party cause her to lose a scholarship, a student investigates whether something devastating happened to her that night.

A 25-year-old man tries to suppress his embarrassment when his mother announces that she is pregnant.

When a brilliant nine-year-old working in a sweatshop gets a chance to attend school, she must make a difficult choice for her and her sister's future.

Oppressed by her family setting, dead-end school prospects and the boys law in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her dress code, and quits school to be accepted in the gang, hoping that this will be a way to freedom.

Two rival reporters team up to help prove the innocence of a man set to be hanged for the murder of a politician.

Hichki presents a positive and inspiring story about a woman who turns her biggest weakness into her biggest strength.

Following a group of friends from university as they progress into middle-age life and go their own separate ways.

After its football team is disqualified for insulting a referee during a major game, a small country town risks losing its funding along with its field. To avoid this disaster, there is only one solution: creating a new team made up exclusively of women to defend the city’s colors! But in a community where football has always been an activity reserved for men, these women’s new status will be sure to shake up the daily lives of the town’s residents…

When a brothel closes because of new laws, four of the prostitutes decide to go into business running a restaurant. They discover they cannot escape their past.

A gifted but insecure woman is in for a transformative experience when she enlists the help of an enigmatic con artist to recover her stolen car.

In the United States for the first time, an Indian housewife with a limited command of English turns Manhattan into her personal language school.

Individually, bank employees Sanjay and Karina don't earn enough to be able to buy a home, so they decide to enter into a marriage of convenience.




