Swades
A brilliant Indian engineer returns to his remote hometown to rescue his beloved nanny and secure her visa, only to confront entrenched bureaucracy and his own cultural disconnection as he fights to bridge the gap between progress and tradition.
“We, the people.”
Synopsis
An accomplished Indian scientist returns to his village with the intention of bringing his nanny back to America, ultimately rediscovering his own roots through the journey.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 40
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by Ballu SalujaShot by Mahesh AneyScored by A R RahmanDesigned by Nitin Chandrakant Desai
Box Office
2004 · Box office
⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.7× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$4.8M
Opening week (7-day): $533K
Peak 74 theaters
Also known as
- Swades - Heimatde
- Swades: We, the Peopleen
- Una luce dal passatoit
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Cast & Crew
40 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Shah Rukh Khan
as Mohan Bhargava
Gayatri Joshi
as Gita
Kishori Ballal
as Kaveri amma
Smith Seth
as Nandan 'Chiku'
Smit Sheth
as Chiku
Lekh Tandon
as Dadaji - Freedom Fighter
Rajesh Vivek
as Nivaran Dayal Shrivastav
Dayashankar Pandey
as Mela Ram
Daya Shankar Pandey
as Mela Ram
Bachan Pachehra
as Haridas
Farrukh Jaffar
as Fatima Bi
Rajesh Balwani
as Rahul Sinha
Supporting cast
17Vishnudutt Gaur
as Vishnu Dutt (Panchayat member)
Raja Awasthi
as Panch Gungadin
Vishwa S Badola
as Panch Munishwar
Bhim Vakani
as Panch Narayan
Rahul Vohra
as Vinod Raaz
Bachan Pachera
as Haridas
Peter Rawley
as John Stockton
Makrand Deshpande
as Fakir
Mary Guyer
as NASA Controller
Mayuri Bagade
as Book Store Girl
Ed Colwell
as GPM Team
Kevin Nelson
as GPM Team
Carlos Hester
as GPM Team
Butool Zaidi
as GPM Team
Frank Harleston
as GPM Team
Shreyas Pandit
as Shreyas Pandit
Rich Petrelli
as Command and Control Center Operator (uncredited)
Directors
1Writers
4Producers
1Other crew
7Parents Guide
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