MOVIES
Ghich Pich film review: A tender tale of fathers and sons in a hypermasculine Indian filmscape
Former tech entrepreneur Ankur Singla’s debut Hindi feature film is a coming-of-age boyhood story set in the ’90s Chandigarh
TECHNOLOGY
Make in India: How Bengaluru’s Scrite app is revolutionising Indian screenwriting
Forget Final Draft & Celtx, home-grown Scrite, founded by Prashanth Udupa, Punit Thakkar & Surya Vasishta, is affordable and has multilingual support. Praised by Rakshit Shetty, Raj B Shetty, Abhaya Simha & Mayur Puri, the app has been used to write Malayalam film 'Footage' to a Bengali novel.
BOOKS
‘Hindustani music is not Brahmanical like Carnatic, which became so after 18th century’: Navayana publisher S Anand
Anti-caste publisher S Anand on co-founding Navayana, re-printing the memoir of Adivasi leader-Olympic hockey player-Constituent Assembly member Jaipal Singh Munda, rejecting Carnatic music for Kabir songs & seeing Kabir through the prism of BR Ambedkar in his latest book 'The Notbook of Kabir'.
MOVIES
‘If I had not made Appuram, I would not be alive today ’: Indu Lakshmi
Malayalam filmmaker Indu Lakshmi on her personal films and her run-ins with the Kerala State Film Development Corporation & its late chairman, cinematographer-filmmaker Shaji N Karun, who passed away in April.
MOVIES
How this African escaped war to study cinema in India and went to Cannes
Ethiopia’s Kokob Gebrehaweria Tesfay, a SRFTI Kolkata student made ‘A Doll Made Up of Clay’ featuring Nigerian Ibrahim Ahmed, who’d come to Kolkata to play seven-a-side football. The short film was selected at La Cinef competition of 78th Cannes Film Festival. Those behind the film talk about its making and the racism Africans face in India.
MOVIES
Sharmila Tagore: ‘Satyajit Ray felt women are more morally superior than men’
Sharmila Tagore on meeting Wes Anderson at the 78th Cannes Film Festival screening of her 1970 film Aranyer Din Ratri; essaying some of Satyajit Ray’s strong women characters on screen; working with two Bengali stars Soumitra Chatterjee & Uttam Kumar; & balancing Bengali cinema with Bollywood.
MOVIES
‘The great David Lynch wanted the spectator to be a detective’: Stéphane Ghez at Cannes 2025
EXCLUSIVE: To many, the cinema of the American auteur nonpareil remains an enigma. French documentary filmmaker Stéphane Ghez tries to decode that in 'David Lynch: Une énigme à Hollywood' ('Welcome to Lynchland'), a tribute to Lynch who passed away on January 16, 2025. The film premiered in Cannes Classics.
MOVIES
Varun Grover on Kiss: ‘Censorship is a good challenge, I find my ways around it with a new language’
In an exclusive interview, multi-hyphenate filmmaker and standup Varun Grover and lyricist-singer turned actor Swanand Kirkire talk about their short film 'Kiss', which released on Mubi this month, how creative control rests with directors more than writers, and the crisis in Bollywood.
ENTERTAINMENT
HFF 2025 | Fasil Muhammed: ‘What you see in my movie Feminichi Fathima is my feminism’
17th Habitat Film Festival, Delhi: Malayalam debutant director Fasil Muhammed talks about his funnily serious feminist film about a woman and her mattress, 'Feminichi Fathima', which picked up five awards at 2024 IFFK Kerala.
ENTERTAINMENT
Rahul Bhat at Cannes 2025: ‘Home is a very emotional subject because I’m Kashmiri Pandit’
78th Cannes Film Festival: Actor Rahul Bhat talks about Black Warrant, returning to Cannes a third time after Ugly and Kennedy, his new LA-produced Kumbh film, and growing up in Kashmir and wanting to be Amitabh Bachchan
LIFESTYLE
Zakir Hussain, thumri & fado: In its 10th year, Serendipity Arts Festival goes to Birmingham
In its 10th edition, Serendipity Arts Festival goes global and celebrates 10 years in 10 cities, starting with Birmingham, the UK. The four-day festival, from May 23-26, will showcase South Asian artistry to foster a cross-cultural dialogue.
ENTERTAINMENT
HFF 2025 | 50 years of Shabana Azmi: When Shyam Benegal offered ‘Ankur’ to Aparna Sen & other stories
At the 17th Habitat Film Festival in Delhi, contemporaries, colleagues and friends filmmaker Aparna Sen and actress Shabana Azmi were in conversation to commemorate the golden jubilee of Azmi's acting journey in cinema.
MOVIES
Hot Docs winner Vivek Chaudhary’s ‘I, Poppy’ is a potent telling of farmers trapped in the opium paradox
After Nishtha Jain's 'Farming the Revolution' last year, Vivek Chaudhary's 'I, Poppy' is the second Indian non-fiction film on Indian farmers to win the top jury prize, Best International Feature Documentary, at the prestigious Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto this month.
ART
Triangle of continuity: How artist S HarshaVardhana carries father J Swaminathan’s legacy forward
S HarshaVardhana’s new solo show ‘Subliminal’ at Delhi’s Art Alive Gallery marks a fresh departure and an arrival in the artist’s oeuvre — from pale hues of his earlier works to a primacy of bold colours — with the triangle at its core and maturity in its articulation.
ART
Lal Bahadur Singh: From signboards & political cut-outs to painting human impact on nature
Artist Lal Bahadur Singh, who grew up in UP’s Ghazipur, says ‘I’m presenting my human society through the figures of birds and animals’ about his exhibition ‘Silent Echoes of a Flight Beyond… and Whispers of the Earth Beneath…’ at Delhi’s Gallerie Nvya.
MOVIES
Miguel Gomes on ‘Grand Tour’ & colonialism: ‘I want the Western viewer to be a little lost’
EXCLUSIVE: Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes’ 2024 Cannes Film Festival Best Director-winning era-spanning, continent-hopping historical drama ‘Grand Tour’ streams on MUBI. Gomes’ cinema has been an influence on Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia.
MOVIES
On Ambedkar | Somnath Waghmare: ‘Chaityabhumi, Bhima Koregaon are my childhood memory & culture, I’m not an outsider’
Dalit History Month: On 134th Ambedkar Jayanti, April 14, MUBI released two documentaries, by Somnath Waghmare & Jyoti Nisha. Somnath Waghmare talks about his film ‘Chaityabhumi’ (2024), Maharashtra’s history of some dominant-caste people having been anti-caste & Bollywood’s saviour complex.
MOVIES
On Ambedkar | Jyoti Nisha: ‘Root of Brahminical & Dalit patriarchy is same but Dalit men are slightly kinder, ours is a shared struggle’
Dalit History Month: On 134th Ambedkar Jayanti, April 14, MUBI released two documentaries, by Jyoti Nisha & Somnath Waghmare. Bahujan Spectatorship theorist Jyoti Nisha talks about her film ‘Dr. BR Ambedkar: Now & Then’ (2023), Bahujan feminist gaze & how caste being talked about in cinema now from an assertive gaze is a new phenomenon.
MOVIES
Uttarakhand’s dammed & drowned village comes alive in Yashasvi Juyal’s epistolary elegy
‘Rains Don’t Make Us Happy Anymore’ review: Actor-dancer Raghav Juyal’s younger brother Yashasvi Juyal’s second short documentary, which premiered at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel International Film Festival 2025, tells a poignant tale of loss & displacement of the Jaunsari tribe of submerged Lohari village.
MOVIES
Cannes Film Festival 2025: Neeraj Ghaywan is Homebound, 10 years since Masaan at Un Certain Regard
Neeraj Ghaywan returns to Cannes Un Certain Regard after a decade, with his sophomore film 'Homebound'. His debut feature film, also Vicky Kaushal's debut, 'Masaan' won the 2015 Cannes Un Certain Regard Special Prize and FIPRESCI Prize.
THEATRE
World Parkinson’s Day: Ludhiana’s Kathak Rockers & a play on Parkinson’s come to Delhi
In Delhi NCR, on the weekend of World Parkinson’s Day, April 11-13, witness a unique stage production 'Still Dancing – A Story of a Parkinson’s Hero', directed by Dubai's Sanjeev Dixit and produced by Movement Mantra coach Vonita Singh, that shows how dance holds a therapeutic key to alleviating Parkinson's disease.
ENTERTAINMENT
Zahan Kapoor — An actor prepares; ‘I don’t feel crushed, I feel inspired’
The young Kapoor scion, Atlas-like, shoulders the weight of two mammoth legacies of his two grandfathers — the legendary Shashi Kapoor and Ramesh Sippy. The ‘Black Warrant’ actor, who’s one of the trustees of Bombay’s Prithvi Theatre, champions both theatre and cinema.
MOVIES
Tingl Belku review: Naresh Hegde Dodmari takes a slow look at drug abuse among Karnataka’s youth
Kannada writer-director Nareshkumar Hegde Dodmari’s debut feature film Tingl Belku (The Light for the Rest of the Walk) was one of the six films at the inaugural CinévSpotlight segment at 2nd Cinévesture International Film Festival, Chandigarh.
ENTERTAINMENT
Vikramaditya Motwane: ‘I’m an enabler not disruptor, that’s Anurag; we are a very sensitive country’
Cinévesture International Film Festival, Chandigarh: Vikramaditya Motwane on a good story being the best risk mitigation, his stuck documentary Indi(r)a's Emergency, Black Warrant success and why showrunner & multiple-producer models work.
