Few people enjoy movies that leave them in tears. One can experience catharsis and a well-needed cry session after watching a sad movie.It could also be an excellent way to process one’s own emotions and give them an outlet.
While some of these movies are purely sad endings, there are others that make audiences cry in instances despite having happy endings.
Here are some Emotional Bollywood Movies that would make you want to get ice cream, a tissue box and stay in bed for a few extra hours.
1. Taare Zameen Par
This Emotional Bollywood Movie is perfect for kids who grew up “naughty” or simply misunderstood, getting hostel threats at every complaint from teachers. It feels like someone giving you a hug or lending their shoulder to you.
It is also an eye-opening view of our flawed and ableist education system. Ishaan’s tearful scenes from the song “Maa” is still something we are recovering from emotionally.
2. Ghajini
A businessman, Sanjay Singhania, suffers short-term memory loss with a memory span of fifteen minutes and lives in despair. He lied to Kalpana about his identity and proposed to her.
Only for her to get murdered in front of his eyes, without ever knowing the truth about Sanjay. It is a heartbreaking story of love, revenge, moving on and disability, executed to perfection by Aamir Khan.
3. Anand
This Emotional Bollywood Movie is an emotional roller coaster about a dying man who looks at life with a positive attitude and enjoys his time knowing fully well his disease is incurable and that he is going to die soon. His last wish is to live whatever he has left, to the fullest.
The climax of the film, Anand’s death,and all the characters seeing him for the last time is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in Hindi cinema.
4. Kai Po Che
Abhishek Kapoor’s Kai Po Che is a story of three friends who experience love, loss, earthquakes, riots, success, and failure.
Set in the tumultuous state of Gujarat in 2001, the movie is a commentary on communalism and how the personal is political.
5. Veer-Zaara
This Emotional Bollywood Movie is a story about cross-border forbidden love. A Muslim girl from Lahore meets and falls in love with a Hindu Indian pilot, played by Priety Zinta and Shah Rukh Khan. He goes on to sacrifice his freedom to protect her dignity and life.
He gets framed and stays in a Pakistani jail for decades as qaidi number 786, all for Zaara. It is a story about selflessness, sacrifice, and transcoding borders.
6. Kal Ho Naa Ho
There is not one person who does not cry while watching Shah Rukh Khan throughout this movie, especially in the climax.
A movie that subtly celebrates heartbreak and instils the belief of living one moment at a time and to the fullest, Kal Ho Naa Ho will make you cry and brighten up your day at the same timme.
7. The Sky Is Pink
This Emotional Bollywood Movie is extremely sad, it starts with death. It is the story that explores what it’s like taking care of and then losing your child. What does your life become after a loss like that? Can love survive grief?
Aditi and Niren are parents to 18-year-old Aisha, they go through so much to take care of her, despite knowing that she has a terminal illness.
8. Lakshya
The story of growing up and war is an important one in every lost person’s life. Karan’s conversation with his father, fixing their problems and just talking is beautiful.
It is a reminder of how many soldiers who do not get to make that call. Karan is in the war zone and his father was comfortably seated on a sofa, watching TV, creating the perfect juxtaposition.
9. Sadma
Somu becomes the caretaker of Nehalata. She regresses to childhood as a result of retrograde amnesia after suffering a head injury in a car crash. He becomes the center of her universe until she is cured in the climax, forgetting about him entirely.
He chases her car to the railway station, falling and severely injuring himself in the process. Covered in mud, he calls out to her and mimicing a dancing monkey that she liked but she fails to remember him. He continues his futile attempts until the train departs, driving him to insanity.
10. Dil Bechara
Perhaps one of the most emotional Bollywood movies, Dil Bechara is the Hindi adaptation of John Green’s best-selling 2012 novel The Fault in Our Stars. Kizie and Manny, two young cancer patients, blossom as they fall in love with each other and life. It is a sad, romantic movie that makes you cry, and yet, it has a lot of heart.
The story’s underlying theme is celebrating life despite death’s inevitabilty. Although it has a fun tone, death and sorrow loom over everything, from the real and on-screen tragedy.
11. Bhaghban
Baghban is a cry session from one scene to the next. It is the story of an elder couple, Raj and Pooja, who are good parents to their 4 sons. However, the grown children are ungrateful and greedy, putting their parents through elder abuse for money.
The scenes of the loving old couple being treated miserably and seperated are heartbreaking. Do not watch this movie with your parents.
12. Highway
This is an Imtiaz Ali gem that makes you cry for its protagonist, Veera. She feels safer with a kidnapper than she does at home, confronts her abusers and comes to terms with the trauma of being a survivor.
The end with Mahabir’s death and Veera’s outburst is genuinely heartbreaking.
13. Neerja
The movie shows how her death breaks her family and those who loved her. Shabana Azmi is at her best, as a heartbroken mother who protected her child all her life, only to get her back in a casket. This is not a movie to watch if you have been missing your mother.
14. Aligarh
This is the real-life story of Prof Siras of AMU and the hell that he was put through for being a gay man. He was fired from his job and put through all societal stigma and ostracization after 2 men barged his privacy during an intimate time with his lover.
The exploration of homosexuality and the impact of homophobia, stigma and rejection is true to most queer lives, including late Prof Siras.
15. Masaan
After seeing the body of his lover and cremating her, Vicky Kaushal’s Deepak cries out to his friends, “Ye dukh saala khatam kaahe nahi hota bey?”
The movie is an exploration of class differences, loss, casteism, young love and ultimately how few people get closure. It is an extremely emotional and tear-jerking movie.