From fabulous Bollywood comes "My Brother Nikhil" about Nikhil Kapoor (Sanjay Suri) who has been living in Goa for several years with his close-knit family. Nikhil wins a sports scholarship, but is then kicked off the swim team representing Goa. Starting out like an ordinary Indian film where everything is happy and bad things happen only with a burst of dramatic music, "My Brother Nikhil" lures you in with its sunny simplicity before turning darker and more complicated like a sudden thunderstorm on a summer day. Almost like a documentary, the story is told through the experiences and from the points of view of Nikhil's father, mother, boyfriend, lawyer, and his elder sister Anamika (Juhi Chawla). One day Nikhil is arrested for being HIV positive. Set from 1987 to 1994, a time when AIDS was not well understood, he is kept in forced isolation by law. His Parents desert him and his friends move away. The only two people who stand by him are his sister and boyfriend Nigel De Costa (Purab Kohli). Confined in an isolated sanatorium, Nikhil is left to rot. This film deals with the trauma of Nikhil and his fight for dignity, and is the first mainstream Hindi language movie where the main character is gay. The film is based on a true story. There is a beautiful excellent hit song, "Le Chale", heard throughout the whole film. Viveck Philip composed the incidental music, Amitabh Verma wrote the dialogue, and Onir wrote the story and directed. Shot entirely in Goa, the film is in Hindi with English subtitles, although about 20 percent of the dialogue is English.
