The Chess Players (film)

For the short story by Premchand, see Shatranj ke Khiladi.
For other uses, see Chess player (disambiguation).

Shatranj Ke Khilari
Directed bySatyajit Ray
Written bySatyajit Ray
Shama Zaidi
Javed Siddiqi
Screenplay bySatyajit Ray
Based onShatranj ke Khiladi
by Munshi Premchand
Produced bySuresh Jindal[1][2]
StarringSanjeev Kumar
Saeed Jaffrey
Shabana Azmi
Richard Attenborough
Farida Jalal
Amjad Khan
David Abraham
Victor Banerjee
Farooque Shaikh
Tom Alter
Leela Mishra
Samarth Narain
Bhudo Advani
Narrated byAmitabh Bachchan
CinematographySoumendu Roy
Edited byDulal Dutta
Music bySatyajit Ray
Release date
  • 11 March 1977 (1977-03-11)
Running time
129 minutes
CountryIndia
LanguagesHindi
Urdu
English
Budgetest. ₹ 20 lakh
(est. ₹ 5.66 crore as of 2022)[3]

Shatranj Ke Khilari, also subtitled and later internationally released with the translated title The Chess Players, is a 1977 Indian film written and directed by Satyajit Ray, based on Munshi Premchand's short story of the same name.

Amjad Khan plays the role of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, Nawab of Awadh, and Richard Attenborough enacts the role of General James Outram. The main cast includes actors Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey as the chess players. It also has Shabana Azmi, Farooque Shaikh, Farida Jalal, David Abraham, and Tom Alter. It has Amitabh Bachchan as the narrator.

It was India's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 51st Academy Awards, but did not receive a nomination.[4]

This is the only full-length Hindi feature film of filmmaker Satyajit Ray. He later made a short Hindi film for TV named Sadgati, another adaptation of Munshi Premchand's short story.

  1. ^ Aseem Chhabra (15 August 2017). "There was always a huge calm on the set". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 7 January 2022. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  2. ^ "Working with Satyajit Ray Was One of the Joys of Producing Shatranj Ke Khiladi". The Wire. 28 July 2017. Archived from the original on 10 July 2018. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  3. ^ "Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players)". Satyajit Ray official site. Archived from the original on 26 October 2018. Retrieved 24 April 2009.
  4. ^ Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences