20 Aug 2026 7 min read Bollywood Charades

Movies for Dumb Charades (Damsharas): 40 Hindi Films That Actually Work

Dumb Charades (damsharas) fails in two ways, and both of them are list problems. Either the picker chooses a film nobody else in the room has seen, and ninety seconds die in silence. Or the picker chooses something so obvious it is solved before the first word has been mimed. Neither failure is the fault of the person standing in front of the sofa.

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The forty films below are grouped by how hard they are to act out, and the grouping is not a matter of taste. Every grade comes from the same difficulty scoring that runs inside the Desi Mauj charades tool, so a film called easy on this page is a film the tool will hand you on Easy mode. No other list in this category can say that, because no other list is attached to a working generator.

What makes a movie hard for Dumb Charades (damsharas)?

A title is hard when it contains nothing you can physically show. Everything else is a variation on that one problem.

The scoring looks at six things in the title itself:

What it looks for	Effect	Example
Concrete nouns you can mime	Much easier	Sholay, Dhoom
Abstract concepts with no image	Much harder	Aks, Kadvi Hawa
Obscure names and places	Harder	Bareilly Ki Barfi
Two or more stacked proper nouns	Hardest of all	Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety
Invented or idiomatic words	Harder	Jajantaram Mamantaram
Five or more words	Harder, and cumulatively so	Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola

Notice what is missing from that list. How good the film is, and how famous it is. Fame helps once guessing has started. It does nothing for the person with their hands in the air.

There is one override worth knowing about. A fixed list of films counts as easy regardless of what the title looks like, because effectively everyone has seen them. Mughal-e-Azam (1960) is five syllables of Persian and still grades easy, since the room arrives on the first gesture.

10 easy movies for Dumb Charades (damsharas)

Every title in this section grades easy, the lowest difficulty the system gives. Use them for the warm-up round and for the youngest players.

Sholay (1975). Fire, in a room that is already expecting it.

Dhoom (2004). One word, and the word is a sound.

Krrish (2006). A mask and a jump. Children solve it faster than adults do.

Singham (2011). A lion. The gesture is the entire title.

Bodyguard (2011). An English word with a posture already attached to it.

Mr India (1987). Two clean gestures in sequence, then an invisible man.

3 Idiots (2009). A number with concrete context, which the scoring treats as easier rather than harder.

Lagaan (2001). Tax, then cricket. The cricket carries it.

Dangal (2016). Wrestling. One gesture, understood everywhere.

Stree (2018). One word, one figure, and recent enough that nobody stalls.

15 hard movie names for Dumb Charades (damsharas)

Every title here grades hard, the top of the scale. I would not open with any of them, and I would not put more than three in a single game.

Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola (2013). Five words, three of them names. The hardest title on this page by some distance.

Sonu Ke Titu Ki Sweety (2018). Three names in a row, each one needing to be established separately before guessing can start.

Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017). A place name that cannot be mimed, and a sweet the room will get wrong four times first.

Manorama Six Feet Under (2007). A name, a measurement and a direction. Three ideas to set up before anybody can begin guessing.

Masaan (2015). Two syllables, and seen by too few people in a mixed room for the gesture to find anyone.

Newton (2017). The room reaches the scientist in about four seconds and the film never.

Trapped (2017). One English word everybody can act out and nobody connects to a Hindi film.

Mukkabaaz (2018). Boxing is easy to show. Getting from boxing to this particular title is not.

Lipstick Under My Burkha (2017). Two concrete objects, and a preposition holding them together that has no gesture at all.

Tumhari Sulu (2017). A pronoun and a nickname. Nothing to point at in either half.

Kadvi Hawa (2017). Bitter, then wind. A room can act out wind for a full minute without narrowing anything down.

Tees Maar Khan (2010). A number, then two words that only mean anything as a phrase.

Jajantaram Mamantaram (2003). Invented words. Miming is not available, so the picker is reduced to syllables.

Kuku Mathur Ki Jhand Ho Gayi (2014). Six words, and a name most rooms will not have heard.

Aks (2001). One short abstract word. Mirrors get acted out immediately and get nobody anywhere.

10 old movies for Dumb Charades (damsharas)

Old films split a room by age, which is either the problem or the whole point of playing them.

The useful thing is that old does not mean hard. Seven of these ten grade easy, because recognition beats title length every time.

Easy:

Mother India (1957). Two words, both of them directly actable.

Mughal-e-Azam (1960). Long title, instant recognition, automatic easy.

Anand (1971). Joy. Abstract on paper and solved in seconds in practice.

Chupke Chupke (1975). A whisper, twice.

Deewaar (1975). A wall, and one of the cleanest gestures in Hindi cinema.

Amar Akbar Anthony (1977). Three names, three faiths, and the room still gets there.

Namak Halaal (1982). Salt first. The second word arrives once the salt has landed.

Harder:

Arvind Desai Ki Ajeeb Dastaan (1978). A full name attached to an abstract noun, which is the worst combination in the scoring.

Andheri Raat Mein Diya Tere Haath Mein (1986). Eight words. The minute runs out before the sentence does.

Baap Numbri Beta Dus Numbri (1990). One word repeated, doing different work each time, and no way to signal the difference.

5 new movies for Dumb Charades (damsharas)

Recent films reverse the age problem, because the youngest players suddenly know something the rest of the room does not.

Four of these grade easy and one grades hard, which is roughly the ratio you want in a closing round.

Gully Boy (2019). Easy. Two English words, both of them actable.

Chhichhore (2019). Easy. The word itself is awkward to show, and recognition overrides it.

War (2019). Easy. One word with a gesture everybody already owns.

Pathaan (2023). Easy. Recent, enormous, and one word long.

Bhavesh Joshi Superhero (2018). Hard. Rooms get the superhero in five seconds and then spend the rest of the minute on the name.

Is it Dumb Charades, damsharas, dumbsharas or damsaraj?

The correct spelling is Dumb Charades. Damsharas is a phonetic spelling of Dumb Charades, and it is extremely common.

Said quickly, the English phrase Dumb Charades compresses into something closer to damsharas, and that is how a very large number of people write it down. Dumb Charades also gets written as dumbsharas, damsaraj and dumbaraaj. Dumb Charades turns up as dum siraj, dumb sheraz and du sharades too. All of them are people spelling a phrase they have only ever heard out loud, which is how most spellings begin.

If you searched for any of those, you are in the right place and nothing needs correcting. The list above is the list you wanted.

How do you run a round without an argument?

Agree the rules before the first film is picked, because every argument in this game is really an argument about a rule nobody set.

Nobody picks for their own team. The single most common cause of a ruined round.
One minute per turn, timed out loud. Silent timing produces disputes about when the phone was started.
No lip movement, and no pointing at objects in the room. Pointing at the television to signal a film is the most argued-about move there is, and the rule has to exist before somebody tries it.
The picker states the number of words first. Long titles are hard enough without hiding the length.

A random Hindi movie generator removes the first problem completely. Nobody chose anything, so there is nobody to accuse.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best movie names for Dumb Charades (damsharas)?
There is no single best title, because difficulty depends on the room rather than the film. For an easy round, Dhoom is the most reliable pick on this page: one word, one sound, and recognition that holds across every age group in the room. For a hard round, Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola sits at the very top of the scale with five words and three names inside it. Use one title like that per game rather than three, or the game slows to a halt.

How many Hindi movies for Dumb Charades (damsharas) do you need?
Plan roughly three films per player. Twelve players running two turns each will get through about twenty-four titles in an hour, assuming a one-minute limit and normal delay between turns. Prepare more than you think you need. Failed turns burn the list faster than successful ones, because a film nobody guessed still cannot be used again in the same room.

What are good easy Bollywood movies for Dumb Charades (damsharas) with kids?
Choose one-word titles with a physical action attached. Dhoom, Krrish, Singham, Dangal and Bodyguard all work with players as young as seven, because each one is a single movement rather than a sentence. Avoid anything containing a negative or a stacked name. A young player has no way to signal a name they have never heard, and the turn stalls in the first ten seconds.

Is there a Dumb Charades (damsharas) movies list for Bollywood I do not have to pick from myself?
Yes. The charades generator on Desi Mauj picks a Hindi film at random and lets you set the difficulty, so no player chooses for their own team and there is no argument about fairness afterward. It is free and needs no download. The grades on this page come from the same scoring the generator runs, so the page and the tool agree on which films are easy and which are hard.

Can you use old movies for Dumb Charades (damsharas) with young players?
Yes, and it works better if you split the teams by age rather than mixing them. A team of teenagers handed Andheri Raat Mein Diya Tere Haath Mein will fail, and watching that is not fun for anyone. The same team watching the older team fail on Pathaan is very fun. Deal old and new titles to whichever team is most likely to be defeated by them, then let both sides enjoy the collapse.

Are new movies for Dumb Charades (damsharas) from 2019 still worth using?
Yes. The 2019 releases have aged into the sweet spot for this game: recent enough that younger players have seen them, old enough that everyone else has caught up. Gully Boy, Chhichhore and War all grade easy and all three land in a mixed room. A film from the last twelve months is riskier, because half the room may not have seen it at all.

Play a round now

If you would rather not print anything, open the generator and set the difficulty to match the round you are on. Easy for the warm-up, hard once the teams are level.

Written by Tapan Desai. Last updated 20 August 2026.