The Warrior

The Warrior is a 2001 film by British filmmaker Asif Kapadia. It stars Irrfan Khan as Lafcadia, a warrior in feudal Rajasthan who attempts to give up the sword. The film is in Hindi and was filmed in Rajasthan, India. The film is credited with convincing Irrfan Khan to not give up on his acting career. The Warrior is the story of spiritual transformation of a cruel warrior Lafcadia. The movie unfolds taking you from Rajasthan to the Himalayas. Kapadia started work on the 2001 film within a year of graduating from the Royal College of Art. Even though this was his first feature film, The Warrior was produced by companies from the UK, Germany and France. At the BAFTA Awards it won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film. It was also one of the films, short-listed for UK's official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but was ultimately disqualified by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences because the film did not take place in, nor was it filmed in a language indigenous to, the United Kingdom. Britain's official Oscar selection was ultimately going to the Welsh-language film Eldra. Plot Lafcadia(Irrfan Khan) is a warrior who serves a ruthless and merciless tyrant in desert plains of feudal India. He leads a band of other warriors loyal to their lord. He lives with his son a young boy who one day while playing meets a little girl. She is the daughter of a travelling cloth merchant woman who arrive at the village for trading. The girl makes him her honorary brother by tying a Rakhi(sacred thread tied by sisters around their brothers' wrists) to him. In return, he gifts his amulet to her. One day, the lord, angered by the failure of a village to pay the harvest tax, orders Lafcadia and his band to raze the village. His sword-wielding and horse-riding men enter the village and begin to burn it down, pillage it and massacre the inhabitants. Lafcadia attempts to kill a girl trying to flee with her mother but stops when he spots his son's amulet around her neck ( she was the same girl who had met his son). It reminds him of his own child and makes him realise the barbarity of his deeds. He also has a brief vision of his ancestral homeland situated in the Himalayas. He spares the life of the girl and her mother. Guilt-ridden and remorseful, he decides to renounce his role as a warrior and return to his homeland in the mountains with his son in search of solace.