Cast: Saugat Malla, Keki Adhikari, Bikram Singh, Priyanka karki, Yama Buddha
Directed By: Dipa Basnet

Life of street children (Commonly called ‘Khate’) is too harsh, particularly in the countries like Nepal. But still, it’s not noticeable to us. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have any story. ‘Shree Panch Ambare’ is about the struggling life of street children from their childhood to adulthood. The movie in particular focuses on two street children, Ambare(Saugat Malla) and Kali(Keki Adhikari).

“Kathmandu has a large number of street children. Estimates put the number well over 1,000 with 500 new street children arriving every year (CWIN) although figures have been hard to estimate because of frequent movement between cities.”
– welcometomyyard.com

Future of a country depends on children and when you have so much street children, the future appears gloomy. I hope government takes some positive steps in uplifting of street children. Most of the children living in the streets right now left their homes at early age because of their family problems. The reasons behind street children in Kathmandu are complex but include witness to and victims of abuse at home, mistreatment and trafficking, the introduction of step families leading to a breakdown of relationships, single parents unable to provide and extreme poverty. While in movie, Ambare becomes street children because of the violation of his step father, who used to shout as, “तेरो आमा बिहे गरी ल्याउदा तँ दाइजोमा आको हो”, which means “you were brought here as dowry, when I married your mother.”

Director, Dipa Basnet has decided to choose a very sensitive story of street children but she couldn’t make it remarkable. It’s not a bad movie, but couldn’t meet my expectations. It could have been better and more heartwarming. The first half of the movie was forgettable, but begins to gain grip after the interval and finally there is no great shakes in the movie. That moment when rapper Yama Buddha sings for street children looked so awkward and unpleasant. There were lots of slow and boring moments which are always uninvited. I would say, the script was not so gratifying. In the end, it was just an ordinary story of normal street children. For I believe, normal things don’t make a good movie, they should have better considered making a documentary.

Besides, there were moments of crazy jokes and few heartwarming events. The tone used characters were very impressive and looked real. Saugat Malla was superb as always and so was Keki. I was really impressed by the performance of Fyane(Bikram Singh) in the movie. His performance as street children was right at balance. Last time I saw him in the movie, Mokshya and he was equally fantastic there too.

 Plot:

Shree Paanch Ambare is a movie about a character Ambare who wants to be the king in the society and a girl he loves, Kali. Both of them grows together as a street children, along with lots of other friends. Ambare and Kali becomes childhood lover. But Kali is taken away buy some stranger and they are separated. Kali becomes prostitute because of coincidences she faces, and Ambare chooses to remain in the street as he becomes connected to the street life. After a long gap, they meet once again and start having affair with each other. In the mean time they had to face a lot of trouble.

Here is the official trailer of “Shree Panch Ambare”