Peepli Live is a 2010 Indian satirical black comedy film that explores the topic of farmer suicides and the subsequent media and political response.

The film stars Naya Theatre company member Omkar Das Manikpuri as well as Naseeruddin Shah, Raghubir Yadav, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Shalini Vatsa and Malaika Shenoy along with a number of newcomers.

After taking a trip to the city with his elder brother, Budhia, Natha discovers that the banks will seize his farm if he does not pay off his outstanding loans.

Natha and Budhia request financial help from the village headman, who mockingly suggests that they commit suicide, after which his family will receive monetary compensation for his death from the government.

The report quickly spreads to national news channels; one high-profile journalist, Nandita, joins Rakesh to interview Natha and his family.

In 2004 Rizvi asked Aamir Khan to read her script and, although he initially refused as he was preoccupied with shooting Mangal Pandey: The Rising, he eventually decided to finance the film after she described the plot to him.

With support of media billionaire Keyur Patel of Fuse Global who is major hollywood financier "Peepli Live" was selected at Sundance Film Festival and his relationship with Robert Redford provided a great platform there.

Subhash K. Jha, film critic and author of The Essential Guide to Bollywood, describes Peepli Live as "a work of damning ramifications."

And that's the bottomline of Peepli Live, a small little film, that showcases the real India without glossing over the contradictions of our fumbling-bumbling democracy or getting overtly sentimental about garibi and the attendant grime that goes with it.

[18] Pratim D. Gupta of The Telegraph wrote "Peepli Live demands to be absorbed and not just watched over the weekend" and praised the director Anusha Rizvi – "she has the gift of the dark humour satire ala Shyam Benegal and in her uncompromised shooting style, she shows the fire of Mira Nair".

[19] Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave it four and a half out of five stars and argues that "the concept [farmers' suicides] would instinctively translate into a serious, thought-provoking film.

[21] Noyon Jyoti Parasara of Yahoo gave the film 3.5 out of five and said, "Peepli [Live] is a class act and director Anusha Rizvi and producer Aamir Khan could take a bow for working this into reality".

[22] Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN also gave it three and a half out of five stars, calling it "a scathing satire on the country's apathy towards the rural class, and specifically towards farmers, Peepli Live employs a comic tone to tell a serious story.

"[23] Mathures Paul of The Statesman gave the film 4 out of 5 stars noting that, "Anusha Rizvi demolishes successfully whatever little faith we had in the political process.

In an interview with The Hindu, he stated that he was astonished to learn that India's official entry for the Oscars this year, Peepli Live, was inspired by Mad City, his best film as an actor.

Its director M. A. Nishad says: "The storyline of the Bollywood movie Peepli Live has a similar theme to Pakal, which was released much before the Hindi film.