Jabbar Patel's The Threshold (Umbartha)

In his fourth film, paediatrician and theatre and film director Dr. Jabbar Patel shows a woman growing into independence, and growing beyond the limits so gently and yet so firmly imposed by an apparently liberal and progressive family. A woman's film, it builds its case with scientific precision and economy, in a manner that will move and convince anybody. Patel's film represents a kind that is not the same as that identified generally with the new Indian cinema, or even the kind that has now defined itself as the middle cinema, or even the kind that has now defined itself as the middle cinema. It tells a straightforward story, uses songs for entertainment, and gets its point across unobtrusively.