"Amu," the ambitious debut feature by Shonali Bose, wears its political heart on its sleeve and is unafraid to tackle big topics: identity, history, truth, injustice.

The film, which begins as a gentle comedy of clashing cultures, follows Kaju Roy (Konkona Sen Sharma), an Indian-American visiting relatives in Delhi. Searching for what she calls "the real India," Kaju, orphaned at 3, is searching for herself and, soon, interrogating the past. And a bloody past it is.

Bose's real concern here is the riots that broke out in 1984 after India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. Thousands of Sikh men and boys in Delhi were murdered, and as Kaju learns, families were dispersed, and justice has been delayed and denied....

Near the end we glimpse a newscast reporting that communal violence has erupted in Gujarat, a reminder that the ugly spirit of 1984 persists. [Link]

Amu starts off as a personal journey and grows, slowly and confidently, into a much larger social and political document.

Kaju (Konkona Sen Sharma) is a young South Asian student from Los Angeles. She is in India to visit her cousins, explore her roots and go back to the village where she was born. Kaju is adopted, and wants to see what remains of the tiny settlement where she was born and where her parents died of malaria.

Having been adopted at age 3, Kaju believes she has no memories of India at all. When she visits a Delhi slum, however, and later ventures near the train station, she remembers brief moments from her childhood....

When Kaju's mother Keya turns up from Los Angeles as a surprise for her daughter, the story of Amu begins to change. Keya (the magnificent Brinda Karat, who is actually a politician and feminist leader in India) is the only one who knows the details of Kaju's birth parents. When Kaju starts to ask specific questions, Keya doesn't know what to tell the girl, and what to leave out.

It is revealed that Kaju's parents were involved in the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October 1984. This hidden chapter in Indian history meant the murders of between 5,000 and 10,000 Sikhs (there was never an official count) over three days, deaths helped along by police and government participation. The facts of the riots, the complicity of officials and the attempt to help people forget any of it ever happened are all filtered through Kaju's grief, as she learns about the tragedy of her childhood. [Link]

Within hours of the death of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on Oct. 31, 1984, marauding gangs of armed men swiftly sought revenge.

Her Sikh bodyguards were blamed for the assassination, and in remarkably short order the avengers located Sikh households in New Delhi and burned or slaughtered their innocent inhabitants.

As panic swept through the slums where many Sikhs lived, police and politicians stood by, denying help to stricken citizens and doing nothing to stop the rampage. The death toll inDelhi rose to 5,000; thousands more were injured.

With her film Amu, director Shonali Bose hoped to do what numerous inquiries have failed to: tell the story of the massacre to the world and obtain justice and reparation for the families of the dead and injured victims. [Link]