Erdal Sabri Ergen with his wife at the Sairat screening at Roxy Cinema, Opera House

Sitting in their plush BKC office, sometime last year, Belgian vice-consul Pinkey Ahluwalia recalls having an animated discussion over the movie Sairat with her expat colleagues. The Marathi film, which was made on a shoestring budget by Nagraj Manjule, told the story of an upper caste girl who fell in love with a lower caste boy amid harsh, and often, unsettling social rules. "While reading the papers, we were discussing the buzz that the film had generated. Even the consul general, Peter Huyghebaert, seemed piqued and wanted to watch the film. However, it seemed difficult because none of us knew the language," she says. Ahluwalia, who was born in Belgium to Indian parents, has been a Mumbai resident for six years. "None of the foreign delegates, including myself, had ever watched a Marathi film because we didn’t get a show with English subtitles," she says.