M. K. Raina

Acting

M. K. Raina

Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, India

M. K. Raina is one of India's best-known theatre actors and directors. Since 1972, he has been freelance theater and film worker, and works all over India in many languages and with many traditional forms.

Acting credits

Like Stars on Earth poster
8.0

Ishaan Awasthi is an eight-year-old whose world is filled with wonders that no one else seems to appreciate. Colours, fish, dogs, and kites don't seem important to the adults, who are much more interested in things like homework, marks, and neatness. Ishaan cannot seem to get anything right in class; he is then sent to boarding school, where his life changes forever.

Like Stars on Earth

2007

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi poster
7.1

A boring, reserved husband secretly becomes a lively, confident stranger to woo his own unaware wife only to make her fall head over heels for his dashing alter ego.

Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

2008

Lakshya poster
6.7

An aimless, jobless, irresponsible grown man joins the army and matures into a battlefield hero.

Lakshya

2004

Giddh: The Vulture poster
6.8

In a remote village at Karnataka-Maharashtra border in India, the poor residents follow Devdasi tradition according to which young girls are given up in the service of Goddess Yellamma.

Giddh: The Vulture

1984

Aisha poster
5.1

Aisha, who loves playing matchmaker much to her friend Arjun's disapproval, finds a new target in the simple Shefali. But in the process, she ends up ruining her own relationship with close friends.

Aisha

2010

Batt Koch poster
NR

In the heart of a bustling city of Jammu, far from their ancestral homeland, Kashmir, a Kashmiri Pandit family juggles the complexities of modern life while caring for an elderly grandfather who struggles with a memory condition.

Batt Koch

2025

Three and a Half poster
3.6

The story of one house in three different eras. Where 50 years ago it was divided between a school and an apartment, in which a young boy struggles with the pressures of pre-pubescent school life, coupled with being compelled to share a tiny room with his paralysed, disconsolate grandfather. Who in turn has devious plans for the child's 12th birthday which happens to fall on a leap year. The same building 20 years later becomes home to a brothel, where a young unexploited concubine is dealing with her self-proclaimed "first" client who has a strange inability to fulfil his physical desire unless obligated to the duress of a transaction to do so. Now, 30 years later these same walls surround a sublime home which belongs to a soul-stirring 75 year old couple who love, laugh and dance together. They whisper the secrets of time forgone and seemed to have overcome the undying need for love and escape which seems to have plagued the inhabitants of this house in the past.

Three and a Half

2018

Savi poster
6.9

Savi, a simple housewife, attempts a daring jailbreak to get her husband out of one of England's high-security prisons consisting of 400 inmates, 75 armed guards, and 60 surveillance cameras.

Savi

2024

Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa poster
6.0

At an anniversary party, Sohrab Handa is found dead, with his throat slit in the hall. As the investigation unravels, friendships are tested, and secrets are revealed.

Everybody Loves Sohrab Handa

2023

Prassthanam poster
6.5

A rural politician marries a widow with kids and gains a respectable position and trusts his stepson more than his own in political matters; thus upsetting his son beyond limits.

Prassthanam

2019

Ek Ruka Hua Faisla poster
8.0

Twelve jurors gather in a closed room to deliberate on a murder charge against a young man accused of killing his elderly father. Eleven are convinced of his guilt, while one remains unconvinced. As the others attempt to persuade him to join their unanimous verdict, doubts begin to emerge. A Hindi adaptation of 12 Angry Men.

Ek Ruka Hua Faisla

1986

Sardar poster
6.5

Sardar is a 1993 Indian biopic on Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, one of India's greatest freedom fighters, directed by Ketan Mehta and written by noted playwright Vijay Tendulkar.

Sardar

1993

Genesis poster
6.5

A farmer and a weaver who have both been liberated from enslavement struggle to survive in an arid, desert landscape. To secure basic necessities, they cast their lot with a merchant, who is a man of suspicious intent but provides for them nonetheless. Things change dramatically, however, when their camp is visited by a woman.

Genesis

1986

27 Down poster
6.6

Sanjay wanted to pursue art, but his father forced him into a career as a train conductor. Unhappy, he meets and falls in love with Shalini but is pressured into an arranged marriage when his father comes to find out. Feeling trapped, he turns to drinking and brothels, until he gets one final chance to escape with Shalini and start his life anew.

27 Down

1974

Blind Alley poster
7.0

Based on Bengali story “Ghar Bari” by Dibyendu Palit, a former revolutionary who has deserted the movement lives in fear of running into old colleagues. Meanwhile he pushes his wife into modelling, and later seamier projects, with tragic consequences.

Blind Alley

1984

New Delhi Times poster
7.3

When a politician is killed, a journalist discovers that a member of parliament had the man assassinated. As his editor digs deeper, the complicity of higher-placed politicians comes to the surface, which leads to riots in one town and an attempt to suppress his story.

New Delhi Times

1986

Satah Se Uthata Aadmi poster
6.0

Taking an experimental approach to the relationship between the written text and moving image, Mani Kaul has a series of texts read aloud in voice-overs (poetry, essays, and stories), while the characters within the texts walk through real or imaginary landscapes.

Satah Se Uthata Aadmi

1980

Manu poster
NR

Set against the backdrop of bustling New Delhi, the story quietly follows a specific day in the mundane routine-driven life of a young boy called Manu. Manu is a nineteen-year-old, introverted, repressed boy who loves art, and belongs to a middle-class religious family in India. On this particular day, a series of events brings him finally to confront himself, and in the end, leaves him in a dilemma to bring the change in his life or not.

Manu

2021

Tarang poster
6.3

Rahul, the son-in-law of an old industrialist and one of the heirs to his fortune, clashes with Dinesh, the industrialist’s nephew who is openly unscrupulous. Rahul, on his part, conceals his personal ambition under a cloak of liberalism and encourages indigenous production.

Tarang

1984

Varthamanam poster
5.7

Faiza Sufiya has come to a Delhi-based campus for her doctorate. But her secular ideology is constantly in conflict with the fascist political temperament prevailing in the university.

Varthamanam

2021

Portrait of an Average Man poster
7.0

In this rather routine, made-for-television movie by famed Indian director Mrinal Sen, an employee (K.K. Raina) in a large office is suddenly facing unemployment because his bosses have found him guilty of negligence. He is devastated, but he cannot lose his job since he is the only support of his family. Interspersed with the employee's efforts to convince his boss, in several different ways, that he cannot be fired are direct dialogues with the author (Shyamanand Jalan) who created the character of the employee. In these latter conversations, the employee berates his creator for giving him an impossible, no-win situation — he has no control over his fate.

Portrait of an Average Man

1984

Panchvati poster
9.0

This is a story about having an extramarital affair within the family itself.

Panchvati

1986

Behind the camera