A fairy tale that unfolds like a fever dream, yet which remains concise in its attack on communal violence and ethnic intolerance, The Wrestlers was hailed as "the best Indian film in years" at the Venice Film Festival. In an isolated Bengali village most amusement comes from watching the two railway flagmen, Nemai and Balaram, wrestle one another, or from getting free meals from the local Christian priest. However, when Balaram brings home Uttara, his beautiful new bride, and when three Hindu fundamentalists arrive to preach and possibly practice destruction, the town's balance becomes threatened, and possibly lost forever. For Dasgupta the film focuses on "an eternal tension that exists between beauty and ugliness and on a dream that will not die." Reminiscent at times of the work of Werner Herzog, The Wrestlers' visions-a parade of dwarves; a woman listening to the sounds of letters in a mailbox; masked performers dancing through a forest; and an unsettling industrial noise seeping into every breeze-are remarkable. It is a conflagration of innocence, nature, and violence not soon to be forgotten.-Jason Sanders