Page 3 is a 2005 Indian Hindi-language drama film directed by Madhur Bhandarkar and produced by Bobby Pushkarna and Kavita Pushkarna. The film revolves around the Page 3 culture and media in the city of Mumbai. It stars Konkona Sen Sharma, Atul Kulkarni, Sandhya Mridul, Tara Sharma, Anju Mahendru, and Boman Irani. The film won three National Film Awards, including the Golden Lotus Award for Best Film.
Madhavi Sharma is a young journalist who arrives in Mumbai looking for a job. She is hired by newspaper editor Deepak Suri to report on celebrity news and writing articles for Page 3. Her roommate Pearl Sequiera is an air hostess who seeking to marry a rich man so that she can have a lavish lifestyle. Gayatri Sachdeva, an aspiring actress, also moves into the apartment. Gayatri enters into a relationship with Rohit Kumar, a leading actor and soon becomes pregnant. Rohit, seeking to protect his career, pressures her to seek an abortion. Depressed and shattered, Gayatri attempts suicide, causing a miscarriage. Pearl marries a wealthy old man and moves to the United States, where she lives an extravagant but loveless life. Madhavi plans to expose Rohit by writing an article on his relationship with Gayatri, but her editor blocks the story, and she is forced to apologize to Rohit.
Madhavi discovers that her boyfriend is bisexual when she finds him in bed with her best friend, Abhijeet. She becomes disillusioned with celebrity lifestyle. She requests to be transferred to a different beat and lands on the crime reporting with Vinayak Mane. She accompanies Vinayak as they search the city for crime-related stories. They witness a bomb blast in the city, which charges Madhavi to investigate the story, but is tasked with to covering a high-profile Bollywood party by Deepak. At the party, she meets the ACP officer in charge of the bomb blast she witnessed, insensitively discussing the incident. Madhavi learns that the officer was attending a film shoot while he was on duty, which delayed his reaction to the blast.
Vinayak goes to cover another news story in Nashik, and Madhavi is left to take charge of crime news. She follows a case of missing boys from a rehabilitation home owned by Anjali Thapar, despite numerous searches. The police learn that a group of boys are being held at the Thapar's private bungalow in Mud Island. Despite not having a search warrant and in Vinayak's absence, they conduct a raid, finding that Ramesh Thapar has been molesting children from the rehabilitation home. Ramesh is arrested, and police also find connections to other influential figures involved in the scandal. Madhavi records the events on camera and develops a breaking exposé story. Deepak promises to run the story as the headline article for the next day's news edition. However, during a meeting with Mr. Agarwal, the owner of the newspaper, Deepak learns that the newspaper receives significant revenue and other sponsorship from Ramesh. Fearing major loss to his business, Agarwal declines to publish the story and asks Deepak to fire Madhavi from the company.
After she is fired, Madhavi meets Vinayak and learns that it was Vinayak's informant who had tipped her off about the boys being picked up. Vinayak consoles her, advising her that submitting all the evidence was a mistake. Madhavi also learns that Thapar's wife committed suicide when she learned that Thapar was molesting boys. After great difficulty, Madhavi reluctantly accepts a job handling Page 3 of another publication.
Covering a party for her new employer, she is shocked to see her former roommate Gayathri, still with Rohit, and her ex-boyfriend with Abhijeet. She also meets Charu Mohanty, a predatory filmmaker who molested Gayathri during her audition. He tells her that everything in the world of celebrities, politics and the film industry is false, and that there are no permanent friends or enemies. Madhavi wordlessly nods and leaves the party.
All songs of this film were composed by Shamir Tandon. The soundtrack album was released on 11 September 2004 and contains 8 tracks in Standard Edition and 12 tracks in Complete Edition. Zubeen Garg and Mahalakshmi Iyer were supposed to sing a song for the film, but, due to unknown reason, both were opted out.
Page 3 was the only bollywood film soundtrack album to implement copy protection on compact disc. Most CD and DVD players won't read this disc and won't treat it as a CD-DA; however, it is possible to insert the disc into a personal computer and play the music via. propiretory software, but it can't be ripped the tracks from Copy Control CDs because it includes DRM, making it harder to rip the tracks to computer.
The film opened to average opening but with positive word of mouth and raving reviews, it went on to do good business later and emerged a semi hit.
2005 National Film Awards (India)
2005 Zee Cine Awards (India)
Won
Nominated
During principal photography, lead actor Amit Ralli died suddenly from jaundice due to hepatitis C. He was 26 at the time. He was replaced by Jai Kalra who made his Bollywood debut with this film.