This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: American audiences will be able to watch an English-dubbed version of "Ramayana," a Hindi film based on a South Asian epic tradition, in theaters in November 2026. The Sanskrit "Ramayana," or "Journey of Rama," is an epic poem that was composed sometime between 400 B.C. and A.D. 400.
The epic follows Rama, an exiled prince and an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, as he journeys to rescue his wife, Sita, from the demon king Ravana. For hundreds of years, people from different religious traditions across South Asia have retold the "Ramayana" through dramas, narrative poems, shadow puppet plays, pageants, folk songs, comics, television shows and many other media. Director Nitesh Tiwari's upcoming "Ramayana" film is the latest retelling of this epic tradition.
For over a decade, I have studied how South Asian epics have been retold within and outside the Indian subcontinent. While many American moviegoers may not recognize the word "Ramayana," they may have already encountered its characters and stories on the big screen. A striking example is Academy Award–winning director Alfonso Cuarón's 1995 film, "A Little Princess." Although an adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's well-known 1905 children's novel of the same name, Cuarón's movie begins with Sara Crewe—the daughter of a wealthy British Army captain posted in colonial India—telling the story of the Ramayana.
As Sara narrates the tale of Rama, the film presents scenes inspired by the epic. Actors portraying Rama and Sita are shown living in exile in a lush green forest. When Sita begs Rama to follow a demon disguised as a beautiful golden deer, Rama draws a magical protective circle around the princess and instructs her to stay within the circle's borders.
The story reaches a turning point with the demon king Ravana's abduction of Sita after she exits the circle. But the Ramayana is more than a story to Sara—it has parallels with her own life, especially after she is separated from her father when she moves to New York to attend boarding school. Cinema and media studies scholar Jyotsna Kapur explains that "the man cast as Rama is Sara's father and the Ramayana is the imaginative thread that binds father and daughter together through their struggles while apart." At boarding school, Sara initially lives like a princess—like Sita—thanks to her father's immense fortune.
Yet after the apparent death of Capt. Crewe in World War I, Sara's headmistress confines the now-penniless child in the school's attic. While mourning her father, the heartbroken Sara uses a piece of chalk to draw a circle on the floor of the attic resembling the one Rama creates to protect Sita.
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