Turup, also presented as Turup (Checkmate), is a 2017 Hindi fiction feature set in Bhopal. Made by the Ektara Collective with residents of working-class settlements, it connects a neighborhood’s roadside chess games with the pressures shaping three women’s lives across caste, class, religion and gender.
What is Turup about?
The film follows three women: a domestic worker with a secret hobby, a young woman in love and a former journalist. Their stories unfold alongside public chess games and simmering tensions in their neighborhood. Rather than treating chess as a separate sporting thread, the film uses it as a way to look at who has room to act, who faces constraints and how power moves through everyday life.
The recurring game is both a local pastime that brings men together and a metaphorical backdrop to the social and political tensions affecting the women. A 2017 Scroll.in feature describes the game as a metaphor for larger political and social moves, whose consequences reach beyond the chessboard.
Why does chess matter in the film?
In the film’s setting, chess is not an imported symbol imposed on the neighborhood: it is part of its public life. The Indian Express reported in 2017 that community chess in Chakki Chouraha was a long-running local tradition. Cinematographer and co-writer Maheen Mirza described it as having continued for more than 45 years; that figure is her statement as quoted by the newspaper, not a separately verified statistic.
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That everyday setting gives the metaphor its force. Players gather around a board and make moves within rules, while the women’s lives are shaped by social structures that limit choices and distribute power unevenly. The contrast lets the film connect intimate decisions with broader tensions without reducing its characters to pieces in an abstract political game.
Who made Turup?
The Ektara Collective is credited with directing and producing the film. The collective’s official film page describes a production involving residents of different working-class settlements in Bhopal: residents formed the cast and much of the crew, and contributed their visions and skills to a collective process.
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The official credits name Rinchin and Maheen Mirza for the script, Maheen Mirza for cinematography and Puloma Pal for editing. The cast includes Moulina Midde, Madhu Bhagat, Nidhi Qazi and Syed Saim Ali. An institutional event description from IIT Bombay’s Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies characterizes Ektara as an independent, autonomous, non-funded group and Turup as its first feature.
The Indian Express reported in 2017 that the film had a crowdfunded budget of Rs 2 lakh. That is a figure reported at the time, not a current production-cost estimate. The newspaper also quoted Mirza on the neighborhood’s chess tradition, placing the film’s central image in a lived local context rather than treating it only as a narrative device.
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Film details and runtime
Listings agree that Turup is a 2017 Hindi film, but give different runtimes. The figures below are source-specific; the available listings do not establish why they differ.
| Source | Details |
|---|---|
| Ektara Collective official page | Fiction, Hindi, India, 2017; 72 minutes. |
| Indiancine.ma archive | Turup (Checkmate), 2017; duration 01:14:49. |
| Auroville Film Festival catalogue | 2017 Hindi drama with English subtitles; 75 minutes. |
Festival history and where to watch
The official film page lists festival appearances from 2017 onward, including Jio MAMI, Dharamshala, Singapore, Göteborg and Indie Meme. Those appearances document the film’s festival circulation; they do not establish that it is currently available to stream or buy. The sources cited here do not verify a present-day streaming service or physical edition.
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Rank #4
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