Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India

Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001) is Ashutosh Gowariker's epic period drama, available to watch online on iFILM. The setting: colonial India in 1893, a drought-cracked village called Champaner, and a land tax the British will not waive no matter how empty the granaries are.

Pushed past his limit, the farmer Bhuvan (Aamir Khan) talks back to the smug Captain Russell, who answers with a wager. Beat the British garrison at cricket and the tax vanishes for three years; lose, and the village pays triple. Trouble is, nobody here has ever held a bat. Bhuvan recruits a team from the men everyone else overlooks, while Russell's sister Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley), sickened by her brother's cruelty, quietly teaches them the game. What follows is months of practice and one match that decides a whole region's fate.

Running close to four hours with A. R. Rahman's songs and huge crowd sequences, the film somehow never sags. It was India's nominee for the Best Foreign Language Oscar and one of the rare Bollywood productions to win over Western audiences on its own terms. Sports underdog story, costume drama and folk musical fuse into a single thing here. Clear the evening and stream Lagaan (2001) online on iFILM.