Family Films to Stream This Diwali: 13 Hindi Films Three Generations Can Watch Together

Hrishikesh Mukherjee's remake of Tapan Sinha's Bengali film Galpo Holeo Satti. Rajesh Khanna plays Raghu, a cook who arrives at a quarrelling joint family's house, ironically named Shanti Niwas, and quietly fixes everyone in it. Jaya Bhaduri and A.K. Hangal co-star. It is the gentlest film here and works for every age.

Mukherjee again, remaking the Bengali comedy Chhadmabeshi. Dharmendra plays a botany professor who poses as a driver to fool his wife's know-it-all brother-in-law, and Amitabh Bachchan an English professor roped in to pretend to be him. Sharmila Tagore and Jaya Bhaduri co-star. Much of the comedy is about language, and grandparents will catch jokes the children miss.

Amol Palekar plays a young man who invents a moustache-less twin brother to keep a job with a boss, played by Utpal Dutt, who distrusts any man without a moustache. It is the template for a generation of Hindi mistaken-identity comedies, and it has nothing to do with Rohit Shetty's later Golmaal series.

Sooraj Barjatya's film is essentially a family wedding with a love story inside it, and it has fourteen songs. Madhuri Dixit and Salman Khan lead. It became the highest-grossing Indian film at the time and the first to gross more than ₹100 crore, won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment, and changed how Indian weddings look.

Barjatya's follow-up, a joint family of three brothers, played by Mohnish Bahl, Salman Khan and Saif Ali Khan, pushed apart when their mother, played by Reema Lagoo, is persuaded that her stepson, the eldest, will sideline her own sons. Barjatya conceived it as a modern-day Ramayana. It was released in Diwali week of 1999, and it is pitched squarely at audiences watching as a family.

Karan Johar's family melodrama opens with the Raichand family's Diwali puja, which is about as close to a Diwali film as Hindi cinema gets. Amitabh Bachchan disowns his adopted son, played by Shah Rukh Khan, for marrying Kajol, and the younger son, played by Hrithik Roshan, sets out to bring him home. It was the highest-grossing Indian film overseas until 2006.

Rakesh Roshan's film has Hrithik Roshan as a young man with a developmental disability who befriends Jadoo, an alien left behind in a hill town. It is the film that started the Krrish series and the one in it best suited to younger children. Preity Zinta and Rekha co-star.

Ravi Chopra's film is the one grandparents ask for. Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini play a retired couple whose four sons agree to look after them only by splitting them up, six months each. Salman Khan plays the adopted son who turns out to be the dutiful one. Critics found it predictable; audiences kept it in cinemas for 25 weeks.

Vikas Bahl and Nitesh Tiwari, who later made Dangal, directed this comedy about a gang of children in a Mumbai housing society who take on a politician to save a stray dog. Salman Khan co-produced. It won three National Film Awards, including Best Children's Film, and it is the pick here for families with younger children.

Sridevi's return after about fifteen years away from films. Gauri Shinde's debut, which she said she made as an apology to her mother, follows a Pune homemaker who sells laddoos and is mocked by her husband and daughter for her English, and who secretly takes an English course while in New York for a family wedding. It is the film on this list most likely to start a conversation at home.

Shakun Batra's film brings two brothers, played by Fawad Khan and Sidharth Malhotra, home to Coonoor after their 90-year-old grandfather, played by Rishi Kapoor, has a heart attack. The family is funny and broken in equal measure, and it is a better portrait of an ordinary Indian family's resentments than most films attempt. Rishi Kapoor won the Filmfare award for Best Supporting Actor. Best for teenagers and up.

Nitesh Tiwari's film about the wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat, played by Aamir Khan, who trains his daughters Geeta and Babita to wrestle in a Haryana village that thinks it is no sport for girls. It is a sports film the whole family can follow, and by most estimates it is still the highest-grossing Indian film worldwide.

Amit Ravindernath Sharma's comedy is about a middle-aged Delhi couple, played by Neena Gupta and Gajraj Rao, who find out they are expecting a third child, to the horror of their grown sons, including one played by Ayushmann Khurrana. Surekha Sikri, as the grandmother, steals the film and won a National Film Award for it. The film also won Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment.