An unforgettable summer -- Summer 2007

Debutant director Sohail Tartari dares to tread where others have quivered. His Summer 2007 is on the surface a film about urban youth, five medical professionals who speak the way they do on the campus. But actually, this is a rare, no, rarest of the rare Hindi film that talks of the silent agrarian crisis gripping the nation.

Farmers’ suicides may not make the headlines with the media drunk on the success of Dhoni’s boys or seeking rising TRPs with the Aarushi murder, but Tartari talks of the Vidarbha crisis where many farmers have ended their lives due to their inability to pay an amount many well-heeled families back in our cities spend on an evening out with friends. There are moments where Tartari gets a shade didactic, just as there are times when he adopts a quasi-documentary approach. For too long it seems we are watching yet another campus saga with its overgrown boys and girls, doing their political stunts and mouthing innuendos. But those are little foibles one would allow Tartari.