Roja

Roja opens the informal 'terrorism trilogy' by Mani Ratnam, following a newly married rural Tamil woman who travels to Kashmir after her husband, a cryptologist working for the Indian government, is abducted by militants. The film was widely acclaimed for humanizing patriotism and personal loss without descending into jingoism, and for its then-unusual choice to set a mainstream Tamil commercial film against the backdrop of insurgency in Kashmir. It marked the debut film score of A. R. Rahman, whose music — blending orchestral scale with folk and devotional textures — was an instant sensation and is widely credited with revolutionizing Tamil (and Indian) film music production, earning Rahman the National Film Award for Best Music Direction. Roja's success helped establish Mani Ratnam as a pan-Indian filmmaker and set commercial and critical benchmarks that Tamil cinema measured itself against through the 1990s.