Trailer
Plot summary
After India gains independence, Indira Gandhi makes her way up inside the Congress Party, where the older leadership expects to control her. She breaks with them over their position on Operation Searchlight, negotiates with foreign governments herself, and gains wide public standing from her conduct of the 1971 war with Pakistan. In 1975 the Allahabad High Court sets aside her election. She declares a national emergency, saying democracy is threatened, and the country's freedoms are curtailed, its newspapers censored and its opposition leaders imprisoned. Her son Sanjay Gandhi takes on growing influence in that period, backing programs that include forced sterilizations and the demolition of slums.
Cast
- Monika Negias Lady at the Art Exhibition
- Manwendra Tripathyas Balwinder Singh Bisht
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Emergency (2025)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Kangana Ranaut wanted A. R. Rahman to compose the music and background score of Emergency, but he refused, saying he did not want to be part of a political propaganda film. She then signed his nephew, G. V. Prakash Kumar, who composed four songs before leaving.
- In April 2025, journalist and author Coomi Kapoor sued Kangana Ranaut's Manikarnika Films and Netflix for breach of contract and defamation, claiming the film misrepresented her 2015 book The Emergency: A Personal History despite a contract requiring adherence to historical facts.
- India's Central Board of Film Certification demanded modifications to scenes in Emergency and granted a U/A certificate only on condition that the filmmakers make specific cuts and provide factual sources for controversial historical claims shown in the film.
- The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee accused Emergency of distorting the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and defaming the Sikh community, and several theaters in the Indian state of Punjab then chose not to screen the film.
- Sikh groups demonstrated against Emergency in the United Kingdom, disrupting screenings on its opening weekend; the Sikh Press Association said the film was seen as anti-Sikh, and screenings were canceled in Birmingham and Wolverhampton.
- Emergency was banned in Bangladesh amid escalating political tensions between India and Bangladesh; officials indicated the decision was tied more to current diplomacy between the two nations than to the film's content.
