Nil Battey Sannata (2016)

Chanda works as a maid in Agra and has one ambition: that her daughter Apeksha should not end up like her. But Apeksha is bad at maths, lazy about studies and convinced that a maid's daughter can only become a maid. Encouraged by her kind employer, Chanda does something startling: she enrols in her daughter's class, sits the same lessons and turns herself into a rival to shake the girl out of her indifference. Nil Battey Sannata (slang for "a big zero") is a warm, funny and moving film about education, aspiration and the bond between a mother and daughter. It was Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari's debut feature and won wide praise for Swara Bhasker and for Pankaj Tripathi as the eccentric principal. The director remade it in Tamil as Amma Kanakku.