GANDHI - THE MOVIE

Gandhi is the eighth-highest Oscar winning film of all time – claiming eight awards from 11 nominations. It was produced and directed in 1982 by Richard Attenborough and starred Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, and Roshan Seth. The movie brought about standing ovations in theatres all over the world.

The movie depicts one of the 20th-century's most remarkable stories, that of the Indian lawyer who returned from racially segregated South Africa to drive the British out of his home country through successive acts of non-violent protests, The film is in every sense of the word an epic and Ben Kingsley is superb as Mahatma Ghandi, ageing as he does 50 years during the three-hour film, and transforming from dapper young lawyer to loin-cloth wearing ascetic. It's recognised now, years after his brutal assassination on January 30 1948, that Gandhi’s amazing achievement as a political leader in India was to create a new form of peaceful protest that could change history.

The bloodshed between the Hindu and Muslim populations of liberated India is addressed, as is the partition of India and Pakistan. You can almost hear Gandhi's heart breaking.

As he says in the film: "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."