Dharti Ke Lal

Dharti Ke Lal (transl. Children of the Earth) is a 1946 Hindustani film, the first directorial venture of the noted film director Khwaja Ahmad Abbas (K. A. Abbas). It was jointly written by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and Bijon Bhattacharya, based on plays by Bhattacharya and the story Annadata by Krishan Chander. The film had music by Ravi Shankar, with lyrics by Ali Sardar Jafri, Nemichand Jain, Vamiq, and Prem Dhawan.

The film was based on the Bengal famine of 1943, which killed millions of Bengali people, and was one of the first films in Indian cinema's social-realist movement.[1] In 1949, Dharti Ke Lal also became the first Indian film to receive widespread distribution in the Soviet Union (USSR),[2] which led to the country becoming a major overseas market for Indian films.[1][3]