Om Puri & Govind Nihalani Movies Together List — 8 Films

The shape of the work

The 1980s account for 88% of everything they made together. The 1980s belonged to Aakrosh; the 2000s to Dev. Govind Nihalani director in some, director of photography in others. Strictly Hindi cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Nihalani cast Om Puri in Vijeta (1982) after seeing him in a Marathi play. Puri was so nervous on the first day that Nihalani had to shoot a rehearsal take just to calm him down.
• On Ardh Satya (1983), Nihalani deliberately kept the camera on Puri's face for long, unbroken takes. He knew Puri could convey a cop's inner collapse without moving a muscle — just through micro-shifts in his eyes.
• Ardh Satya (1983) directly inspired Anurag Kashyap's Gangs of Wasseypur. Kashyap has said that Puri's cop in that film is the reason he wrote the character of Ramadhir Singh — a villain who never raises his voice.
• After Party (1984) flopped, Nihalani and Puri didn't speak for nearly a decade. They only reconciled when Puri called Nihalani out of the blue in 2003 and said, 'Let's make one more film before I get too old.' That became Dev (2004).
• Om Puri once said: 'Govind doesn't direct you. He just puts you in a room and waits for you to find the character yourself. It's terrifying, but it's the only way I learned to act.'