Director: Karan Tejpal
Cast: Abhishek Banerjee, Shubham Vardhan, and Mia Maelzer
Writer - Karan Tejpal, Gaurav Dhingra, Swapnil Salkar Agadbumb
Platform – Amazon Prime Video 
Duration – 90 Minutes 
 
Let’s get one thing straight—Stolen is not your average popcorn thriller. There's no bomb defusal, no high-speed chases, and definitely no villain with a maniacal laugh twirling a mustache. What you get instead is far more unsettling: quiet dread, social discomfort, and the slow realization that the scariest things in life don’t always come with a dramatic soundtrack. Sometimes, they unfold in the stillness of a sleepy railway station.
 
Directed by Karan Tejpal and clocking in at a tight 90 minutes, Stolen does something rare—it respects your time and your intelligence. The plot is deceptively simple: two brothers, a missing baby, and a mother in panic. But beneath this straightforward setup lies a deeper, more insidious story about class, perception, and how easy it is to become a suspect when you’re standing in the wrong shoes.
 
We first meet Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee), the older, sharper brother who walks like he’s used to people listening when he talks. He's the type who thinks his wallet is a Swiss Army knife—it can solve anything. And then there’s Raman (Shubham Vardhan), the younger sibling who’s softer, steadier, and more likely to help you find your lost earring than call his lawyer. They reunite at a train station, where Raman is arriving late for their mother’s destination wedding. The mood? Mildly annoyed older brother energy. But that casual family vibe goes sideways fast when Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer), a tribal woman resting nearby, wakes up and finds her baby missing.
 
Her accusation is instinctive, heart-wrenching, and pointed: she sees Raman holding a wool cap that belonged to the baby, and suddenly, the air gets heavier. The police arrive, and while the misunderstanding is "cleared up" on paper, the damage is already done. From here, Stolen unravels with quiet precision, pulling us into a narrative that feels more like quicksand than rollercoaster—each moment more suffocating than the last.
 
Here’s where Stolen really earns its stripes: in what it chooses not to do. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t spoon-feed. It lets you feel the helplessness, the claustrophobia, and the gnawing moral discomfort all on your own. There’s no overcooked dialogue, no background score telling you how to feel. Instead, scenes simmer with quiet tension. Even the silences feel like accusations.
 
The performances are all aces. Abhishek Banerjee gives us a layered Gautam—brash, arrogant, but also fiercely loyal. He’s the guy who will throw money at a problem but also throw himself into the fire for his brother. Shubham Vardhan, in contrast, brings a grounded calm as Raman, the conscience of the story. Their dynamic—principle versus practicality—is one of the film’s richest veins. And then there’s Mia Maelzer as Jhumpa, who barely has any lines but says everything with her eyes. Her grief is raw, unvarnished, and unforgettable.
 
The film also benefits from its atmosphere. Tejpal uses setting like a secret weapon—the foggy chill of early morning, the eerie stillness of the station, the faceless bureaucracy of the police station—all of it adds to a sense of creeping dread. You’re not just watching events unfold; you feel like you're standing in the middle of them, unsure whether to speak or just hold your breath.
 
Yes, the middle stretch does falter slightly. The brothers get stuck in a bit of a loop—angry villagers, mounting misunderstandings, repeated tension. But even in those repetitive beats, there’s a sense of escalating hopelessness that works for the film’s theme: what happens when no one listens? When truth becomes irrelevant, and perception writes the ending?
 
And that ending—without giving anything away—doesn’t go for grand gestures. It stays true to the film’s DNA: understated, unresolved, but profoundly affecting. It leaves you with questions, discomfort, and a weird sense of gratitude that some stories still trust the audience to do the emotional math.
 
Stolen is executive produced by a powerhouse lineup—Anurag Kashyap, Kiran Rao, Vikramaditya Motwane, and Nikkhil Advani—and you can see the fingerprints of that indie-meets-mainstream energy throughout. It’s polished, purposeful, and deeply personal. Based loosely on a real incident, it resists the temptation to get preachy, instead opting for a subtler kind of social commentary—the kind that seeps in slowly and stays with you long after.
 
Stolen is not loud. It doesn’t beg for your attention. It quietly earns it. And if you let it, it’ll haunt you—not with ghosts or gore, but with questions you won’t be able to unask.