TRENDS
IFFI 2023: ‘Bulgarian pensioners are the biggest victims of transition from 1989's totalitarian system to market economy today’: Stephan Komandarev
Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev, whose film Blaga's Lessons has won Silver Peacock for Best Director at the 54th International Film Festival of India, in Goa, this week, and is headed to Oscars 2024, talks about casting 1980s Bulgarian star Eli Skorcheva and telephone scams to rob the elderly.
ENTERTAINMENT
6 must-watch documentary films on borders
In the absence of violence, what is life like along a national border? Samarth Mahajan, whose documentary 'Borderlands' dropped on YouTube, recommends these documentary films to explore the idea of borders
ENTERTAINMENT
Sri Lanka’s Prasanna Vithanage: ‘Making an Indian language film is the highest achievement of my life’
Third-generation Sri Lankan cinema pioneer Prasanna Vithanage on living through civil war, economic crisis, Ramayana tours & 2023 Kim Jiseok win for Malayalam film Paradise.
ENTERTAINMENT
Jio MAMI 2023 | ‘Serbia used to be cut-off, now it’s stuck between the East & West, tradition & globalisation’: Nina Ognjanović
Serbian filmmaker Nina Ognjanović, whose Slamdance winner debut neo-Western feature 'Where the Road Leads' screens at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, talks about her film, Serbian cinema, and loving Satyajit Ray's films.
ENTERTAINMENT
Jio MAMI 2023 | Nehir Tuna on Turkish boyhood film Dormitory & young people’s conflicts around religion with patriarchal parents
Nehir Tuna's Turkish boyhood film Yurt (Dormitory) premiered at 80th Venice International Film Festival and screens in India at Mumbai Film Festival on November 3.
TRENDS
Why Matthew Perry’s awkward Chandler Bing was relatable
That friend, from that '90s show, we had and lost. His memoir, published last year, and his American sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S will be pages from his life, those suffering will keep turning to.
ENTERTAINMENT
Making of Joram: Manoj Bajpayee, Devashish Makhija & a big studio make the subaltern run
In, perhaps, a first for independent cinema, a major Indian studio backs an Adivasi story. Zee Studios' Bajpayee-starrer, Makhija-directed manhunt thriller premiered at IFFR Rotterdam and released in theatres worldwide on December 8.
ENTERTAINMENT
Jio MAMI 2023 | Turkish filmmaker Selman Nacar: ‘Cinema is a very good tool to ask questions’
Selman Nacar on visiting India with his Venice-premiered 'Hesitation Wound' at Mumbai Film Festival's world cinema segment, on making legal and relationship drama thrillers and cinema's effect being indirect and profound, not direct and superficial.
TRENDS
Jio MAMI 2023: 24 must-watch indies at Mumbai Film Festival’s Recap from the last 3 years
Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival returns in a physical format post-COVID, October 27-November 5, after three years of no-show. With its Recap segment, it will be revisiting the MAMI-selected Indian independent films which weren't screened. Here's a list
TRENDS
Shyam Benegal on Bangla biopic Mujib: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a political leader who didn’t neglect domestic life
‘Mujib: The Making of a Nation’, on Bangladesh's founding father, will release in multiple languages in India on October 27. The veteran filmmaker, the second Indian auteur after Ritwik Ghatak to make an India-Bangladesh government co-production, on his films and Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy.
TRENDS
Jio MAMI 2023: After winning €50,000, Kumaoni film on Nepalese labourer & pandemic migrant crisis to screen in Mumbai
Bahadur the Brave, by debutante Diwa Shah, and shot in Nainital, became the first Indian film to win the Kutxabank New Directors Award, at Spain's oldest film festival San Sebastian, winning the highest monetary prize at any film festival. It will premiere in India at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival next week.
ENTERTAINMENT
Before Mission Raniganj, came this film on Jharia coalfield, where century-old fires burn nonstop
Lubdhak Chatterjee's Locarno-premiered debut feature film 'Whispers of Fire & Water' is a meditation on environmental and human tragedy seen through the lens of an individual's internal journey.
TRENDS
IFFLA 2023 preview: An Indian film festival in the heart of Hollywood
Christina Marouda, the Greek founder of the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, whose 21st edition takes place this week, October 11-15, on the need for global festivals to include diverse Indian films.
ENTERTAINMENT
APSA nominated Assamese film Tora’s Husband maker Rima Das: ‘I read in the Bhagavad Gita that grief is also yoga, with it comes great development’
The National Award winner, who's been nominated for 2023 Asia Pacific Screen Awards for Best Director, along with Celine Song, Liang Ming, among others, on her most challenging film to date and making independent cinema in India.
TRENDS
Dev Anand@100: How this Gujarati man became Dev Anand’s lookalike and met his god
On the birth centenary of Dev Anand, September 26, a deep dive into the journey of celebrity lookalike Kishor Bhanushali, or Jr Dev Anand, who has kept the Hindi film legend alive through him. He features in Geetika Narang Abbasi's latest documentary 'URF/a.k.a.' on Bollywood duplicates.
ENTERTAINMENT
Jio MAMI 2023: TIFF NETPAC award winner Marathi film ‘Sthal’ is a solid indictment of the indignity of arranged marriages
Prime Video show 'Guilty Minds' co-director Jayant Digambar Somalkar's debut feature 'Sthal (A Match)', the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film winner at 48th Toronto International Film Festival, will screen at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival later this month.
ENTERTAINMENT
Lust Stories 2: Who’s the man in The Mirror?
BSNL employee Shrikant Mohan Yadav has been a versatile Marathi film actor for two decades, but unlike Konkona Sensharma's segment 'The Mirror' in the Netflix anthology 'Lust Stories 2', in which he plays Amruta Subhash's husband Kamal, most Hindi films/shows see him as a cop. It's the fate of many Marathi actors in the Hindi cinemascape.
ENTERTAINMENT
Bollywood in gender dilemma, TISS out with a new study
Tata Institute of Social Sciences' School of Media and Cultural Studies' new study on gender representation in Hindi films, and how to make the industry gender-equal was released this week.
ENTERTAINMENT
Zarrar Kahn on Pakistan & patriarchy, his Cannes horror thriller ‘In Flames’ & Indo-Pak collaboration
In the post-Joyland world, another Pakistani film on the horrors of patriarchy, with a supernatural twist, and how diaspora producers are navigating political restrictions to tell decolonial stories of South Asia.
ENTERTAINMENT
Cannes 2023: In this Marathi short film, COVID & menstrual taboo served a Kolkata man a female story
On Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s cinema’s influence on FTII alumnus Yudhajit Basu and his Marathi diploma short film ‘Nehemich’, which premiered in 76th Cannes Film Festival’s La Cinef competition and will have its Asia Premiere at 2023 Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.
ENTERTAINMENT
The rise of Manipur, women, cinema: Ishanou & documentary on Aribam Syam Sharma at Cannes 2023
Joshy Joseph’s non-fiction film ‘Laparoscopic Cinemascapes’ was a companion piece to Aribam Syam Sharma’s classic ‘Ishanou’, which returned to the Cannes Film Festival, and spotlights Meitei culture.
ENTERTAINMENT
HFF 2023: Don’t miss these 12 indie movies at the 15th Habitat Film Festival
Delhi’s 10-day pan-Indian Habitat Film Festival, from May 5-14, will screen over 60 films across 17 Indian languages, a Mrinal Sen retrospective, and more, from rare finds to global fame, here’s our pick.
ENTERTAINMENT
Pandemic, pyaar, paisa: The crumbling of love & youth in ‘Pokhar Ke Dunu Paar’
Presented by Anurag Kashyap, Parth Saurabh’s debut Hindi feature set in Darbhanga, ‘Pokhar Ke Dunu Paar’, which released on MUBI, tells a collapsing mofussil love story impacted by the COVID-19-triggered economic crises.
TRENDS
BIFFes 2023 | 'Family' and Don Palathara's 'grey cinema': Church, community, and the cunning
Crisis of an individual and a community in the Vinay Forrt-starrer 'Family', Malayalam independent filmmaker Don Palathara's layered sixth film, which had its world premiere at IFFR Rotterdam last month and is premiering in India at the 14th Bengaluru International Film Festival, on March 26.
