Half a century after it first exploded onto Indian screens, Sholay (meaning: embers)—widely regarded as the most iconic Hindi film ever made—is making a triumphant return.
The fully restored, uncut version of Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 epic will have its world premiere at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy, on June 27. For the first time, audiences will see the film as it was originally envisioned—with deleted scenes and its original ending, which was altered after objections from the censors.
The screening will take place on the festival’s legendary open-air screen in Piazza Maggiore—one of the largest in Europe—offering a majestic backdrop for this long-awaited cinematic resurrection.
Crafted by the celebrated screenwriting duo Salim-Javed, and headlined by a stellar cast including Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri, Sanjeev Kumar, and the unforgettable Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh, Sholay is inspired by Westerns and samurai films, yet remains unmistakably Indian.
The 204-minute film tells a classic tale of good versus evil, set in the fictional village of Ramgarh. Two small-time crooks, Jai and Veeru (Bachchan and Dharmendra), are hired by former jailer Thakur Baldev Singh to capture Gabbar Singh, a ruthless dacoit who would become one of Indian cinema’s most enduring villains.
Sholay ran for five uninterrupted years at Mumbai’s 1,500-seater Minerva theatre. It was later voted “Film of the Millennium” in a BBC India poll and named the greatest Indian film in a British Film Institute survey. Over half a million records and cassettes of RD Burman’s pulsating score—and the film’s instantly recognisable dialogues—were sold.
Beyond the box office, Sholay is a cultural milestone. Its dialogues are quoted at weddings, referenced in political speeches, and spoofed in ads.
“Sholay is the eighth wonder of the world,” Dharmendra said in a recent statement. For Amitabh Bachchan, shooting the film was “an unforgettable experience,” though he added, “I had no idea at the time that it would become a watershed moment in Indian cinema.”
According to Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of the Film Heritage Foundation, this newly restored version is the most complete and faithful cut ever released.
In the original ending—now restored—Gabbar Singh is killed by Thakur, who crushes him with spiked shoes. But censors objected to a former policeman taking the law into his own hands. They also found the stylised violence excessive—especially in the politically charged atmosphere of the Emergency, when civil liberties were suspended by the ruling Congress government.
After negotiations failed, Sippy was forced to reshoot the ending. The crew rushed back to the rugged hills of Ramanagaram in southern India—transformed on screen into Ramgarh—where Gabbar was captured, not killed, to appease the censors.
The restoration journey was no less dramatic. The original 70mm prints had not survived, and the camera negatives were in poor condition. In 2022, Shehzad Sippy—son of Ramesh Sippy—approached the Film Heritage Foundation with a proposal to bring the film back to life.
To their astonishment, original 35mm camera and sound negatives were discovered in unlabelled cans in a Mumbai warehouse. Soon after, reels stored in the UK were also recovered, with the help of the British Film Institute. These were shipped to L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna—one of the world’s top restoration labs—for painstaking work that even uncovered the original camera used to shoot the film.
Yet, Sholay’s success was not instant. On its release, reviews were scathing, and the initial audience response was muted. India Today dismissed it as a “dead ember,” and Filmfare’s Bikram Singh criticised its “unsuccessful transplantation” of a Western into Indian soil.
“In early screenings, there was just silence—no laughter, no tears, no applause,” writes Anupama Chopra in Sholay: The Making of a Classic. “By the third week, the audience was repeating dialogues. It meant that some were coming to watch it again.”
A month later, Polydor released a 48-minute dialogue LP. The film’s momentum surged. Its characters became household names, and Gabbar Singh—terrifying, yet wildly popular—achieved cult status. Foreign critics dubbed it India’s first “curry Western.”
“As they used to say about the British Empire, the sun never sets on Sholay,” distributor Shyam Shroff once remarked.
Why does Sholay still resonate? Amitabh Bachchan offers a simple explanation: “The victory of good over evil and… most importantly, poetic justice in three hours. You and I shall not get it in a lifetime.”