Gondhal Movie: What the Marathi Film Is About
Gondhal uses Maharashtra’s midnight Gondhal ritual to frame a story of oppressive marriage, forbidden love and escape.
What is Gondhal movie about?
Gondhal is a Marathi feature directed by Santosh Davakhar. The Press Information Bureau’s account of its IFFI presentation places the story during Maharashtra’s midnight Gondhal ritual. It follows Suman, a woman in an oppressive marriage, and her involvement with Saheba, a Gondhali performer. Forbidden love and an attempt to escape drive the central conflict. Press Information Bureau
The useful inference is that the ritual is not merely visual decoration. The film places a private crisis inside a public, communal performance, so desire, deception and escape become part of the same cultural setting. That makes Gondhal easier to understand as a ritual-centred drama than as a simple story about folklore.
Why does the ritual matter to the story?
The Press Information Bureau describes Gondhal as a devotional, all-night folk performance involving music, dance, storytelling and community participation. The film’s premise uses that collective form to carry an intensely personal conflict.
This contrast changes what a viewer might expect. The ritual supplies the film’s cultural world, while Suman’s marriage and relationship supply its emotional pressure. The official description therefore points towards a story where tradition and personal choice remain in tension, rather than a detached presentation of a performance.
The Habitat Film Festival listing similarly describes the film as exploring ritual tradition, personal ambition and human vulnerability, and classifies it as a cultural thriller or psychological drama. India Habitat Centre
Is Gondhal a 2025 film or a 2026 release?
The available official records place the film in 2025. It was included in the Indian Panorama feature-film selection at the 56th International Film Festival of India, held from 20 to 28 November 2025. The CBFC’s Marathi record carries a UA 16+ certificate dated 7 November 2025. Indian Panorama selection CBFC record
A 2026 Habitat Film Festival page lists Gondhal as a 2025 film in a festival programme. That is useful context for separating a later festival appearance from the film’s documented 2025 identity.
What recognition has the film received?
Santosh Davakhar later received the Silver Peacock for Best Director at IFFI 2025 for Gondhal, according to the Press Information Bureau. Press Information Bureau
That award is context rather than a promise that every viewer will respond to the film in the same way. The stronger reason to understand its premise is the connection between the form and the conflict: a traditional communal ritual becomes the setting for a woman confronting pressure, attachment and the possibility of escape.
The short answer
If Gondhal is the Marathi film being searched for, it is a ritual-centred cultural thriller about Suman, oppressive marriage, forbidden love, deception and escape. Its official record places it in Marathi cinema, in the 2025 Indian Panorama selection, with a UA 16+ CBFC listing and a Best Director award for Santosh Davakhar. The film’s distinctive question is how a public tradition can hold a private crisis—and what happens when the person at its centre tries to break out of it.