India has been watching the Ramayana on screen for decades, well before Nitesh Tiwari’s film with Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi and Yash became the thing everyone is talking about. Sunday mornings, cinema halls, animation, south and north, it’s all been done. Some versions were so good nobody has topped them. Some were so bad people are still complaining.Nitesh Tiwari’s film, mounted at Rs 4,000 crore across two parts, opens today. So before you book your ticket, here are ten screen Ramayanas worth going back to, ranked.Ask anyone who lived through it and they won’t call Ramayan just a TV show. Doordarshan ran it on Sunday mornings for 78 episodes, and the streets went quiet. Whole families crowded around one set. The Limca Book of Records lists it as the most-watched mythological serial, and during the 2020 lockdown re-run it reportedly became the most-watched entertainment show anywhere in the world. Arun Govil and Dipika Chikhlia in a still from Ramayan.Arun Govil is still Ram for a huge number of viewers. Dipika Chikhlia is still Sita, Sunil Lahri still Lakshman, and nobody has managed to replace Dara Singh’s Hanuman. Arvind Trivedi’s Ravan was loud, theatrical and tremendous fun.It also had no competition: one channel, one slot, one Ram for the entire country. Every Ramayana since has been measured against it, and Nitesh Tiwari’s will be too.ALSO READ: Ramayana Part 1 Movie Review LIVE Updates: Ranbir Kapoor film expected to earn Rs 125 cr on opening day2. Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama (1993, animated film)This Indo-Japanese film was directed by Yugo Sako, Koichi Sasaki and Ram Mohan, and it runs from Ram’s exile through Sita’s abduction to the war with Ravana. The hand-drawn animation has aged well, and Vanraj Bhatia’s score carries much of the emotion.Story continues below this adIt treats Ram as a prince first and a god second, which gives it a freedom devotional cinema rarely allows itself. The forests look like actual forests, and the battles are huge without being noisy. It sticks close to the source, so a first-timer can follow along, and someone who knows the epic by heart won’t be bored.Indian audiences got to it late, mostly via television and home video. A remastered version did eventually reach our theatres.3. Sampoorna Ramayanam (1958, Tamil film)K. Somu’s film is a Tamil production with a Telugu star in the lead. N.T. Rama Rao plays Ram, Padmini is Sita and Sivaji Ganesan appears as Bharata. The story covers Ram’s birth to his coronation. It ran for over 264 days in theatres and was dubbed into Hindi in 1960.It mattered for NTR’s career as well. He went on to play Ram in Lava Kusa (1963), Sri Ramanjaneya Yuddham (1974) and Sri Rama Pattabhishekam (1978), and Telugu audiences began seeing him in that role. When he founded the Telugu Desam Party in 1982, those years of playing gods were part of the image he carried into politics.Story continues below this adIt proves that the south had its own big-screen Ramayana long before television handed the country a single version.4. Siya Ke Ram (2015-16, TV)Star Plus told the epic largely from Sita’s side, with Ashish Sharma as Ram and Madirakshi Mundle as Sita. It’s gentler and slower than the 1987 serial. After decades of watching Sita suffer, here was a show that asked what she wanted.It spends real time on her early life, her bond with Ram and the choices she made. The sets and costumes are lavish and the performances warm. The middle sags, as it does in most daily soaps. Even so, it’s the most interesting Ramayana on Indian television since Ramanand Sagar’s.5. Kanchana Sita (1977, Malayalam film)Story continues below this adG. Aravindan’s film is the boldest on this list. It’s based on the Uttara Kanda, the stretch after the war when Ram sends Sita away. There is no Ravana, no Hanuman and no battle. Stranger still, Sita never appears on screen, though the film carries her name. Aravindan makes her felt through the natural world instead: the wind, the sounds around Ram, the silences between them. You get a long, steady look at duty, power and what a king pays for both. A still from Kanchana Sita. (Screenshot: YouTube/potatoeaterscollective)Where another director would write dialogue, Aravindan uses landscape and silence. It’s slow, and anyone hoping for spectacle will struggle. It’s here because it shows the epic can ask hard questions instead of just comforting people.6. Sri Rama Rajyam (2011, Telugu film)Directed by Bapu, with Nandamuri Balakrishna as Ram and Nayanthara as Sita. The film skips the exile and the war and stays with the later chapters, Ram’s reign and the separation from Sita, which most mainstream versions hurry through.Story continues below this adIlaiyaraaja’s music is a big plus, and Nayanthara’s restrained Sita drew wide praise. The tone is devotional and the staging traditional. Go elsewhere for a fresh reading. Come here if you want the story told with reverence.7. Sita Sings the Blues (2008, animated film)This is the odd one out, and not a Ramayana in the usual sense. American cartoonist Nina Paley made it, and it tells two stories side by side. One is the Ramayana, mostly from Sita’s point of view. The other is Paley’s own: her husband moved to India for work, she followed, and the marriage ended soon after.Sita’s story is drawn in a bright, flat, folk-art style, and her songs are 1920s jazz recordings by the American singer Annette Hanshaw, old numbers about longing and heartbreak. On paper that shouldn’t work. It does.Story continues below this adThe film leaves Ram as the epic’s king and hero. What it looks at is the hardest part of his story: after Sita returns from Ravana’s captivity, he sends her away because of what his subjects are saying about her. Most versions frame that as a king putting duty above his own happiness. Paley asks what it cost Sita, and what it says about a marriage where the husband bows to public opinion.Three shadow-puppet narrators chat through the story and keep disagreeing about what really happened. Their point is that the Ramayana has been told many ways and nobody owns the final version.Paley released the film free under a Creative Commons licence, so you can watch it online. It sits at number seven because it isn’t what most people want when they go looking for a Ramayana. If you’re open to a different take, it’s among the most original films here.8. Ramayan (2002, TV)B.R. Chopra and Ravi Chopra had already made Mahabharat. For this Ramayan on Zee TV they cast Nitish Bharadwaj, their Krishna, as Ram, with Smriti Irani as Sita. Its 48 episodes drew on Valmiki, the Ramcharitmanas and other traditions, and computer graphics were the big selling point.Story continues below this adIt was ambitious, and it had the bad luck of following Ramanand Sagar’s. Viewers who grew up on Arun Govil weren’t ready for another Ram, and the series never found the same audience. It deserves more credit than it got.9. Ramayan (2008, TV)Sagar Arts returned to the epic on NDTV Imagine, with Gurmeet Choudhary as Ram and Debina Bonnerjee as Sita. The two had easy chemistry on screen and married in 2011, which became part of the show’s own story.The sets were brighter and the pace faster than in 1987, and younger viewers took to it. But it hits the same beats as the original, with more polish. Pleasant enough, and a copy.10. Sampoorna Ramayan (1961, Hindi film)Story continues below this adBabubhai Mistry, a pioneer of trick photography in Hindi cinema, directed this one, with Mahipal as Ram and Anita Guha as Sita. Hindi studios of the day often reached for religious epics when they wanted big-screen spectacle, and it shows: painted backdrops, theatrical acting, and effects that were ambitious for their time.The trick shots are the draw, and some still have charm. Today it’s mostly of historical interest, but worth a look if you’re curious how these films were made.