Viceroy's House is a 2017 fictional drama film directed by Gurinder Chadha and written by Paul Mayeda Berges, Moira Buffini, and Chadha.^[4] The film stars Hugh Bonneville, Gillian Anderson, Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi, and Michael Gambon.^[5] It was selected to be screened out of competition at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival.^[6]

The film was released in the United Kingdom on 3 March 2017,^[7] while the Hindi dubbed version titled Partition: 1947 was released in India on 18 August 2017, three days after its 70th Independence Day. It was released worldwide on 1 September 2017.^[8] Viceroy's House is based on Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, and The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of Partition by Narendra Singh Sarila.^[9]

Lord Dickie Mountbatten arrives at Viceroy's House in New Delhi in 1947 with his strong-willed wife Edwina and daughter Pamela. As the final Viceroy of India, he is in charge of overseeing the dissolution of the British Raj and the establishment of an independent Indian nation. Mountbatten attempts to mediate a disagreement between the two major Indian political leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru, who wants India to remain intact as one nation after independence, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who wishes to establish the separate Muslim state of Pakistan. Meanwhile, Mountbatten's newly arrived valet Jeet encounters the beautiful Alia, whom he had fallen in love with previously. Alia continues to spurn Jeet because he is Hindu and she Muslim; she fears that she will disappoint her invalid father Ali, whom Jeet had helped during a spell of imprisonment at British hands.

With riots erupting across India, their few non-Indian troops thinly spread and the loyalties of their Indian troops conflicted between Sikh, Muslim and Hindu, the British decide to accelerate the independence process. Initially influenced by Gandhi, Mountbatten is intent upon a one-state solution, but with intensifying violence between Muslims and Hindus he reluctantly accepts the Partition of India. He is given only a couple months to carve out a separate state from the existing territory, with the help of an inexperienced English lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe.

Jeet continues to pursue Alia, despite the fact that she has been betrothed since childhood to another man, and like the other servants at Viceroy's House they are forced to choose between staying in India or going to Pakistan. Mountbatten is enraged to find that his Chief of Staff Lord Ismay has been working covertly to draw the boundaries of Pakistan in order to create a buffer state between the Indian subcontinent and the Soviet Union and to allay fears that a socialist-leaning united India would give the Soviets access to the warm water port at Karachi. He realizes that he has been used as a pawn and the displacement of millions of people will result.

Jeet is devastated to learn meanwhile that his entire family has been slaughtered in Punjab. Although Alia rejects her fiancé when he returns to claim her, she chooses to depart for Pakistan with her father. Days later Jeet reads in the newspaper that the night train she had boarded was attacked and everyone was killed. In anger he brandishes a knife at Mountbatten, before resigning his post. With Delhi overwhelmed with refugees, the Mountbattens decide to stay on in India to assist where they can. While Jeet volunteers to help with the refugees, Alia is brought in badly injured but alive, the lone survivor of the train attack. She recognizes Jeet and shouts for him, and the two are reunited.

On 30 April 2015, it was announced that Hugh Bonneville and Gillian Anderson would star in the fictional period drama film Viceroy's House to be directed by Gurinder Chadha, which Chadha scripted along with Paul Mayeda Berges and Moira Buffini.^[10] The film set in 1947 during the Partition of India, and the life inside the Viceroy's House, would be produced by Chadha, Deepak Nayar, and Paul Ritchie.^[10] Pathé and BBC Films would be co-financing the film.^[10] On 1 September 2015, more cast was announced including Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi, Tanveer Ghani, Denzil Smith, Neeraj Kabi, Om Puri, Lily Travers, Michael Gambon, and Simon Callow.^[11]

Principal photography on the film began on 30 August 2015 in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, where it was shot for eight weeks.^[12][11]

The film was released in the United Kingdom on 3 March 2017.^[7]

Viceroy's House was selected to be screened out of competition at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival on 12 February 2017.^[2][6] The film was released in the United Kingdom on 3 March 2017;^[7] it was dubbed in Hindi, titled Partition: 1947,^[13] and released in India on 18 August 2017.^[14][15] It was banned in Pakistan.^[16]

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 76% based on 41 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10.^[17] The New York Times praised the film for "cramming ample history into a compact running time without sacrificing flow or interest."^[18] The Washington Post called it "educational, if melodramatic," concluding that "the movie accomplishes a difficult task, making sense of a complicated period in history."^[19]

• List of artistic depictions of Mahatma Gandhi