AFS Essential Cinema: EARTH February 17, 2009

Lenny is an eight-year-old girl living in Lahore with her wealthy Parsee family and loving Hindu nanny, Shanta. Family friends include Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus, all of whom seem to get along quite well, but it is 1947, the year that India is freed from British rule. Along with that freedom comes a partition of India into primarily Hindu India and primarily Muslim Pakistan (West and East initially). But this new division of India and Pakistan into religiously defined nations leads to an unprecedented exchange of populations as millions of Muslims move into Pakistan and millions of Hindus and Sikhs take their places in India. Horrendous bloodshed and cruelty are inevitable, friendships and alliances dissolve, and Lenny is ultimately betrayed by a man she considered a true friend.

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