Roundglass Sustain, a non-profit foundation which commissioned this film, is the only conservation platform in India that collaborates with partners such as photographers, filmmakers and NGO’s to create stories that impact change and behavior.
Read More
Sofia Coppola's 'Priscilla' to close the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival
The Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, which runs from October 27 to November 5, announced on Monday that this year’s Closing Night film will be Coppola’s film based on the 1985 memoir ‘Elvis and Me’ written by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon.
Read More
Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival to open with Hansal Mehta's 'The Buckingham Murders' starring Kareena Kapoor
While at the BFI London Film Festival, where the title world premiered this past week, the filmmaker sat down for an insightful ‘Selfies Interview’ and discussed a bit about the film as well as why he loves having Kareena in his project.
Read More
Filmmaker Karan Tejpal and producer/writer Gaurav Dhingra talk Venice title 'Stolen'
Screened as part of Orizzonti Extra in Venice, the Indian indie production featured an unrelenting heroine, one that though penned by male writers, ticked all the boxes of a perfectly female character for me.
Read More
Achintya Bose and Manish Chauhan in ‘Yeh Ballet’, image courtesy of Netflix
"The poetry of it!": An interview with Sooni Taraporevala on her 'Yeh Ballet' currently streaming on Netflix
If you google the film ‘Yeh Ballet’ you’ll find that the Wikipedia short description reads like this: “Discovered by an eccentric ballet master, two gifted but underprivileged Mumbai teens face bigotry and disapproval as they pursue their dancing dreams.” And those sort of stories are always the best kind — yet Sooni Taraporevala’s film goes one step further. Or rather several beautiful, seamless dance steps further.
As someone who had fallen in love with Taraporevala’s heartfelt way of making films through her directorial debut ‘Little Zizou’ — a childhood story taking place in the Parsi community in South Bombay — ‘Yeh Ballet’ only intensified this cinematic love story.
Read More
Antshi von Moos's 'Brother, Move On' is an ode to the courage of one woman driving her taxi at night in Delhi
Antshi von Moos’s debut documentary short ‘Brother, Move On’ is one of those unmissable films which possesses the right appeal, even on paper. The story of a Delhi woman who drives a taxi at night, catering to an all-female clientele to make sure they get home safely, made up the perfect storm of place, leading character and premise to secure I’d yearn to watch it. That it is a real story, told with kindness and a deep understanding of the subject matter at hand, is just icing on the cake.
Read More
Shince and Fernando in a still from ‘This Is Not Cricket’ by Jacopo de Bertoldi
Jacopo de Bertoldi's 'This Is Not Cricket': What a "little story of the ordinary everyday" can teach us of our world
I found my love for cricket within an Italian filmmaker’s documentary that has little to do with the game and much more with humanity’s place within it. Well, the film is called ‘This Is Not Cricket’ after all, and the filmmaker is wonderfully fresh voice in documentary, Jacopo de Bertoldi. A man with whom every conversation turns into an explanation of life.
Read More
A still from 'Tumbbad' by Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad
Scary to the core: a teaser of 'Tumbbad' by Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad
Probably one of the most anticipated titles in Venice -- along with Luca Guadagnino's remake of Dario Argento's 'Suspiria' also a horror film -- is the opening work at the Venice International Film Critics Week, a cool sidebar of first features and shorts curated by film journalist Giona A. Nazzaro. 'Tumbbad' is a collaboration between two filmmakers from India, Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad and the synopsis alone gave me shivers…
Read More
From left Deborah Feldmann, Rokudenashiko, Leyla Hussein, Vithika Yadav and Doris Wagner
'#Female Pleasure' in Locarno: Glow in the dark vagina giveaways, woman power and calling out the misogyny in religion
Yes, that is a mouthful up there and quite a loaded title, I agree.
But Barbara Miller's latest documentary, '#Female Pleasure' which premiered in Locarno in their Semaine de la Critique sidebar and walked away with the Zonta Club Locarno Price for Extraordinary Social Commitment is a film chock-full of important messages and loaded with human causes. So, nothing less than a long title could do.
Read More
'Searching for Saraswati': How to claim a river, or build a wall, to unite a country
A couple of days ago I woke up to a quote by beloved Mexican artist and all around cool woman Frida Kahlo on Twitter -- it was her birth day: "I do not think the banks of a river suffer because they let the river flow.." It seemed significant in my life because it was the day I'd received from two wondrous filmmakers their latest work, 'Searching for Saraswati' -- a NY Times Op-Docs 20-minute documentary supported by the Sundance Institute and the MacArthur Foundation on the rediscovery of the mythical Saraswati river in Northern India.
Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya first appeared on my cinematic radar two years ago, when their feature 'The Cinema Travellers' premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. When I was sent a screener of the film, I ended up watching it spellbound, for its duration, never stopping or even daring to look away. And more than two years later, the images from this masterpiece -- their first feature film, if you can believe it! -- still color my consciousness. I find myself, from time to time, yearning for that feeling of wonder I had watching it for the first time, and the second time and even a third, finally on the big screen in Dubai. Truly, 'The Cinema Travellers' is a masterpiece of sensitivity and a love song by two poets of our times to the Seventh Art.
So how would the duo ever outdo themselves, I wondered, and felt a bit of nervous apprehension as I prepared to watch 'Searching for Saraswati' -- which premieres on the 10th of July on the NY Times site.
Read More
Nawazuddin Siddiqui as ‘Manto’
“Because We Live in Unbearable Times”: Nandita Das Unveils ‘Manto’ in Cannes
The wonder that is Indian filmmaker and actress Nandita Das first appeared on my radar through her performance in the film ‘Fire’ by Deepa Mehta. The story of two women trapped in respectively loveless marriages with brothers, who discover within each other the companion they crave, it was a film that created as much sizzle on as it did off the screen. It was passed uncut by India’s censor board which then gave into (sort of, then retracted it) religious zealots who started to burn down cinemas and attack audiences to protest its release.
Fast forward twenty years and Das once again flirted with controversy with her feature directorial debut ‘Firaaq’, an unsentimental account of the impact of the Gujarat riots on the Indian Muslim population. The film left such an impact on me, I could hardly think about anything else for weeks after viewing it. I remember researching articles about the riots and I craved to go back to Ahmedabad, which I’d visited the year before I watched the film, to revisit the city with Das’ haunting vision in mind.
These days, the beautiful, smart, and wonderfully strong Das is working on a film about Saadat Hasan Manto, an Indian-Pakistani writer and playwright who once wrote this hauntingly true phrase “If you cannot bear my stories, it is because we live in unbearable times.” Prophetic, wasn’t he.
Read More