In a tale (and a spectacle) worthy of Ulrike Ottinger's Madame X, Amar Jyoti tells of a virtuous wife who becomes the leader of a band of female pirates after she loses her suit against her cruel husband, losing her son to him as well. Ruling the high seas for twelve years, the women pirates, who have all been similarly wronged, save their sisters from the tyranny of the queen's stern minister of justice, Durjaya. But revenge is sweetest of all, and Durjaya is made to undergo the sufferings of an enslaved woman, and then some. More than an impressive visual and aural feast--with lavish sets, back projection and then-state-of-the-art playback singing on the high C's--Amar Jyoti was one of the first big films to take up the cause of Indian women trapped in a backward social system. It was acclaimed internationally when shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1936.