This article examines how four Indian films make socially produced vulnerability visible and determine whose account of it carries authority. The sample comprises Fandry (2013), Masaan (2015), Article 15 (2019), and Jai Bhim (2021), selected for their contrasting treatment of caste, gender, labour, and institutional violence. A qualitative comparison of key sequences brings Butler's account of precarious life and Berlant's account of attachment into conversation with Ambedkar's critique of caste, Rege's Dalit feminist standpoint, Guru's work on humiliation, and Das's understanding of violence in ordinary life. The analysis follows public exposure in Fandry, the relationship between cremation labour and grief in Masaan, investigative authority in Article 15, and the movement from a woman's testimony to legal evidence in Jai Bhim. These readings develop the concept of conditional legibility: the terms on which a vulnerable person's experience becomes intelligible and credible within a film. Visibility can enforce caste subordination, while institutional recognition can depend on a privileged intermediary. The films also show how refusal, desire, and sustained claims to justice exceed the position of the passive victim. Their different production and circulation contexts are treated as overlapping possibilities within 2013–2021, rather than as stages in a linear history of progress. The article argues that the politics of vulnerability depends on the relationship between exposure and agency, not simply on the presence of marginalized characters or the prestige of an aesthetic form.