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When I think of Pran Saab his whole career appears to be unique and unmatched,” the great Irrfan Khan once said to me.

Now when I think back on the mighty Pran Krishan Sikand’s astonishing career I am astounded at his versatility. After making his debut as a leading man Pran ruled the box-office as a villain for a good 45 years. During the 1960s and 70s you won’t come across any newly born child named Pran: the name was synonymous with villainy and evil. In 1967, the visionary filmmaker-actor Manoj Kumar cast Pran in a sympathetic role as Malang Chachcha in Upkar.

After being hated for decades Pran was immediately accepted as good man. He later played the good Samaritan in Adhikar(1971), Zanjeer(1973) and numerous other films while continuing to be the badman.

Shatrughan Sinha who also made that tricky switch-over from villain to hero remembers cancelling his trip...

When we talk about the most popular nepo-babies of Bollywood, Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan, Kajol, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, Rani Mukerji, Konkona Sen Sharma, Shabana Azmi, and more are brought up. But Abhishek Bachchan, for some reason, is always considered to be one of the worst products of nepotism. I mean, it’s not like the aforementioned names don’t have bad movies in their filmography. And, sure, it’s tough to reach the stature of the one and only Amitabh Bachchan and the equally legendary Jaya Bachchan. However, it’s kind of unfair to ignore all the good performances he has delivered in the last 2 decades, some of which not only eclipse his contemporaries but also his parents. He was phenomenal in Yuva. He went toe-to-toe with his dad in Bunty aur Babli, Sarkar, Sarkar Raj, Kank, and Paa. His performances in Guru and Raavan remain unmatched. I...

What does a life shaped by a persistent question mark truly look like? Actor-turned-director Joséphine Japy’s compelling debut, The Wonderers, positions this very query at its core, meticulously exploring a family’s existence held in a state of suspended animation by an unknown force.

Drawing from her own deeply personal history, Japy constructs an autobiographical narrative about the Roussier family, whose daily rhythm, conversations, and future plans are all dictated by the youngest daughter, Bertille. She lives with a severe, undiagnosed disability that renders her non-verbal and wildly unpredictable.

We are invited to witness this challenging life primarily through the observant eyes of her older sister, Marion, a teenager navigating her own coming-of-age while being forced into a state of maturity far beyond her years.

The film immediately establishes itself not as a story offering easy answers or sentimental lessons about suffering, but as a powerfully intimate and observational drama focused on the complex,...

Rituparno Ghosh was an iconic filmmaker and one of the finest auteurs to emerge from contemporary Bengal. According to film critics, he is the inheritor of the legendary Satyajit Ray’s legacy, and through his films, rooted firmly in middle-class values, desires, and aspirations, he is highly critical of the interpellations in patriarchal discourses and structures. His films represent his journey as a filmmaker from nurturing a strong feminist sensibility, which later evolved into radical queer politics.

Ghosh’s popularity was not only confined to India; he also got international recognition quite early in his career. And this reputation was built with the enthusiasm of the Bengali diaspora. It is believed that when Ray had passed away in 1992, a void was created within the Bengali film industry, and the emergence of Ghosh during such a critical period was like a stroke of fresh air that helped in its revival.

Each...

With the global success of Lijo Jose Pellissery’s ‘Jallikattu’ (2019), contemporary Malayalam cinema can boast of pushing the boundaries of conventional cinema, and filmmakers from the region with unique storylines are becoming more the norm than the exception in the film industry, which could now proudly declare to the world its creative dominance. But if we trace the history, the rich tradition of quality and thought-provoking filmmaking practices in Kerala has always been prevalent.

When the so-called parallel filmmaking movement was thriving in our nation, filmmakers from Kerala played a crucial role in enriching the culture of such creative endeavors. One such filmmaker was Adoor Gopalakrishnan, whose debut feature film Swayamvaram heralded the New Wave in Kerala. He is often described as Satyajit Ray’s worthy successor and regarded as India’s most distinguished art-house filmmaker. His filmmaking style usually involves long takes and prolonged moments of silence that help...

As Upendra Baxi notes in “Postcolonial Legality: A Postscript from India,” the postcolonial remains an unusually “resilient and versatile” term — in part because postcolonialism critiques the very colonial systems that shaped it. However, there lies a paradox at the heart of the postcolonial condition, for it resists structures inherited from colonial rule while also being haunted by them. And this paradox unfolds most powerfully in cinema, where art fuses with reality to reveal uncomfortable truths — ones that we often passively accept as “normal” or inescapable. Two such films, Satyajit Ray’s “Hirak Rajar Deshe” and Mrinal Sen’s “Chorus,” blend fantasy and realism, satire and song, to offer searing critiques of power, control, and resistance.

In both films, power is not maintained through violence alone, but through manipulation of thought and illusion; whether it is the despotic king who uses the “Jantar Mantar” to brainwash citizens into submission, or the...

Television director Daniel Minahan’s On Swift Horses left me with extremely mixed films. By no means is it an irrevocably dishevelled work. On the other hand, some of its plotting is so pedestrian it felt like a betrayal.

The very fact that the film has the power to evoke a sentiment as strong as betrayal proves the director and his writer Bryce Cass are on to something special. Sadly the film loses it way in trying to find a path through what was known in the 1950s as “forbidden love.”

In ploughing gently through the fertile farm of fragile feelings, the narration encounters unforeseen hurdles, much of it of the most vapid variety.

When we first meet the film’s very lovely heroine Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones) she reminded me Madhabi Mukherjee as Charulata in Satyajit Ray’s film. The same smouldering yearning, a longing for something that her arid marriage cannot provide.

In Satyajit Ray’s “Nayak: The Hero” (1966), there is a very important scene set in a flashback. It is an extremely transformative moment of Arindam’s life. He is sitting by the pyre of his mentor and asks his manager, Jyoti, a question with intense apprehension. Arindam is torn between his mentor’s parting advice to him and his own desire to reach for higher success. Jyoti, who is often seen as the voice of reason in Arindam’s life, says that these anxieties about transitioning are displaced as they are in the “age of Freud and Marx.” He implies that there’s no room for traditional notions like rebirth, providence, and implies that Arindam should shed the guilt away from this transition.

Much like the scene described above, this film takes us through many transformative moments of Aridam’s life and paints the portrait of an artist’s state of mind.

When Satyajit Ray’s 1970 film Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Nights in the Forest) returned to Cannes this May, it was far from a faded relic. Restored by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur and the Film Heritage Foundation, the film, in ravishingly revived form, was selected for the prestigious Cannes Classics section as a testament to Ray’s enduring influence on world cinema through classics like 1955’s Panther Panchali, which is the first film in the director’s celebrated Apu Trilogy.

To mark the occasion, The Hollywood Reporter India spoke with three individuals deeply touched by the film and its creator: legendary Indian actress Sharmila Tagore, a frequent Ray collaborator; Wes Anderson, whose work bears Ray’s influence; and Dungarpur, whose archival work revived the film.

“I watched [Ray’s 1961 title] Teen Kanya first, just because it happened to be available in a video store in Texas,” Anderson recalls. “That’s how I became interested in his films.

Let’s get this out of the way right from the top: Wes Anderson has never made a bad movie, and — in all likelihood — he probably never will. He’s too particular, too immaculate, too in command of his craft. Of course, the fact that he has always been so sure of himself only makes it more tempting to chart the progress of his career and to measure his films against each other. Or maybe it’s just fun because there are still only 12 of them, and everyone seems to have their own favorite. Who could say?

Anderson is the rarest of rarities, an arthouse filmmaker who not only finds ways to consistently make ambitious original projects, but also maintains genuine influence on what remains of mainstream pop culture. (None of the other esteemed directors who competed for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival were...

Subhash K Jha shines the spotlight on Nargis the reel and the real her in this special feature.

There were so many facets to the iconic Nargis Dutt .

I once remember her son Sanjay telling me, “Others knew her as the joyous, generous, large-hearted woman. For the world, she was Mother India. For me, she was my mom. Yeah, she pampered me silly. She would deny me nothing. Dad was the disciplinarian. For me, she was…everything.”

When we think of Nargis, we think immediately of Mehboob Khan’s Mother India. It is to Nargis’ career what Sholay was to Amjad Khan. Nothing that Nargis did thereafter could compare favourably with Mother India.

Indeed, Nargis in Mother India is a marvel of Nature. She was only 28 when she played mother to Sunil Dutt and Rajendra Kumar so convincingly. To take such a bold risk of playing a mother so early...

Subhash K Jha shares an unpublished in-depth and open interview with the brilliant auteur Rituparno Ghosh.

With Bariwali, you stepped into Hindi cinema. Was that a good experience?

But why should Bariwali be a stepping stone to a Hindi film? My earlier films like Unnishe April and specially Dahan too have been shown and appreciated in Mumbai. I’ve been getting offers to do Hindi films even before Bariwali. But yes, this is my first film which has been seen by a wider audience, maybe because Anupam Kher, being a Mumbai actor, could generate some curiosity for the film.

Unnishe April is actually the film with which you arrived?

Yes, but before that, I made a children’s film with Basant Chowdhary and Moon Moon Sen called Diamond Ring , which was commissioned by Shabana Azmi on behalf of the Children’s Film Society. It never got released and became important only after Unnishe April.

Director Mehran Amrohi, talks with Subhash K Jha about his brilliant film on lost childhood Chidiya.

What are your feelings as Chidiya has finally been released after a ten-year wait?

Honestly, Sir, I’m very emotional. I may be a writer, but I don’t think I have the words to express it. This is my first film, and I shot it nearly 10 years ago. The fact that it’s finally releasing means a lot to me. At the same time, I’m also nervous — just like a student before an exam. Your steps feel unsure, your words feel jumbled… but somewhere inside, there’s hope.

Child labour is a sensitive subject. How did you handle it in your film?

Chidiya isn’t about just one issue. It’s a story about ordinary lives, the kind many people live every day, especially in financially weaker sections. Yes, child labour exists...

Although he is widely regarded as one of cinema's greatest auteurs, Akira Kurosawa always struggled to find acceptance in his home country of Japan. His story was similar to that of the Indian maestro Satyajit Ray, whose internationally acclaimed movies weren't considered commercial enough in his home country. But Kurosawa continued making incendiary cinema till the very end of his life and career, disproving Quentin Tarantino's theory about movie directors losing their touch as they grow older. Last year, Kurosawa's masterpiece Seven Samurai was re-released theatrically in honor of its 70th anniversary. And this past week, 15 locations celebrated the 40th anniversary of Kurosawa's Ran.

Originally released in 1985, Ran was perhaps Kurosawa's final masterpiece. It was a modest hit at the box office, but it remains one of the best-regarded films of that era. The movie generated nearly $50,000 this past weekend, registering a per-theater average of over $3,200. In fact, by this metric,...

Writer-Director Mehran Amrohi, who has struggled for ten years to finally get his directorial debut into movie theatres, deserves a standing ovation for his minimalist masterpiece.

Chidiya is a gem of a film, an instant classic, if you will. It conveys what the director so succinctly describes as “the joy in scarcity” with such an austere stare at neo-realism, I immediately want to put him up there with the masters of neo-realism, Vittorio de Sica and Satyajit Ray.

The theme of “joy in scarcity” characterized de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves as much as Ray’s Pather Panchali. Echoes of past greatness do not colour the contemporary texture and the lucidly lensed chawl life of Amrohi’s simple yet strong supple saga of the survival of the frailest section of our society.

Amrohi lets his two young protagonists, Shanu and his kid brother Bua, played with wondrous spontaneity by Svar Kamble...

In Vitro immediately plunges the viewer into a chillingly familiar near-future, presenting a science fiction thriller framework that resonates with profound dramatic undercurrents and palpable atmospheric horror. We are introduced to Layla and Jack, a couple whose existence on a remote Australian cattle farm is anything but idyllic.

Their struggle is set against a stark backdrop: a climate crisis has decimated traditional agriculture, making natural resources perilously scarce. In this world, meat is largely a factory product, a synthetic echo of what was. The couple has staked their hopes and dwindling finances on pioneering cloning technology for cattle, a desperate bid to cater to a population still yearning for the “real thing.”

From its initial frames, the film masterfully cultivates a mood of pervasive foreboding. The vast, empty landscapes amplify their isolation, while a palpable bleakness seeps into their interactions. The tension in their marriage is an unspoken third presence,...

A single shattered guitar string can echo a lifetime of longing—and in Sweetness, it snaps at the precise moment teenage grief collides with celebrity obsession. Sixteen-year-old Rylee (Kate Hallett) inhabits a world of muted hallways and classroom cruelty, her solace found only in the soaring choruses of Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas) and his band, Floorplan. When a chance collision outside a sold-out concert leaves Payton vulnerable in her care, Rylee’s quiet desperation sparks into a lockdown thriller: she handcuffs her idol in the basement of her suburban home.

Stylistically, the film marries the claustrophobia of Bollywood’s dark thrillers—think Kahaani’s winding alleys—with the restrained realism of Indian parallel cinema, using long takes to let emotions simmer. Yet its narrative pulse owes as much to Nordic chill as to Hindi melodrama, reflecting Gen Z’s global mash-up of influences.

From Rylee’s bedroom shrine—walls plastered...

Debutant director Mehran Amrohi’s Chidiya which finally gets an all-India release May 30 after travelling to several national and international festival, is a rare film about the mind of children that doesn’t talk down to them.

Usually, we either have films with children as protagonists that are patronizing in tone: the cinematic equivalent of lisp-talking to children and pinching their cheeks.

Or we have children in our films who behave as if they have been cloned from an app: bratty, all-knowing eye-rollers.

Chidiya does none of this. Its innocence is daunting. Amrohi inhabits the child’s psyche unconditionally. There is no attempt to prod the plot into pointed productivity or manipulate the impressionable minds. The two child actors, Svar Kamble and Ayush Pathak, don’t behave like actors. Neither does the exquisite adult cast.

It has taken Amrohi a while to get here.

Shabana Azmi, who resolutely champions the cause of cinema for children,...

Does Aditya Chopra actually exist? He does, friends. He does. I have actually met him, albeit briefly and when he was told I was a journalist he fled , literally ran away.

Such are the dream encounters that make life worth living.

If the truth be told, I was far closer to Aditya’s father, the great Yash Chopra who was rightly very proud of his elder son. Yashji loved people. He loved meeting them. Whenever he came to know I am in Mumbai he cleared his appointments and made space for me.

During one of our meeting dear Yashji spoke about his sons. “My younger son Udit is the people’s person. He loves to go out , party,meet friends. My elder son Aditya is a complete recluse. Earlier I used to tell him to go out and meet friends. But he preferred to be home, writing films. When he...

Guillermo Galoe’s first feature, showcased at the 2025 Cannes Critics’ Week, follows Toni, a Roma teenager whose home in Madrid’s sprawling La Cañada Real faces demolition. Shot like a docu-drama, the film captures daily life under threat while tracing Toni’s quest for meaning amid uncertainty.

By blending non-professional actors with smartphone Pov footage, Galoe crafts a coming-of-age tale that echoes the social-realist tradition of Indian parallel cinema—think Satyajit Ray’s focus on community and naturalism—yet remains grounded in contemporary European struggles.

The film’s heartbeat is Toni’s relationship with his greyhound, Rayo, a silent witness to family tensions and fleeting joy. Galoe invites viewers into a world where eviction looms as an ever-present force, and a boy’s search for freedom mirrors broader questions of identity and belonging across global cinema.

Streets of Resistance: The World of La Cañada Real

La Cañada Real emerges as...

Jigar Nagda’s debut film A Boy Who Dreamt of Electricity (2024) is a story of a young Adivasi boy who is born into a hapless system that does not account for his rights. To make matters worse, his house on top of the hill does not have electricity and no one seems to be concerned. What course of action does the young boy, Bheru, take?

The Rajasthani film, A Boy Who Dreamt of Electricity, is going to be showcased at the Habitat Film Festival this week, on May 22, 2025. We recently had the chance to have a chat with filmmaker Jigar Nagda about his film: how he tries to present the truth by being in line with the right facts, the response the film evokes from the Western audience to a throbbing Indian issue, and his five cinematic highs.

Damayanti Ghosh: I wanted to tell you that this must be the...

A six-year restoration journey spearheaded by filmmaker Wes Anderson has culminated in Satyajit Ray’s 1970 masterpiece “Aranyer Din Ratri” (“Days and Nights in the Forest”) securing a slot at Cannes Classics.

The restoration project began in 2019 when Anderson, through his position on the board of Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation, initiated discussions about preserving the film. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” director’s passion for Ray’s work drove the collaborative effort between The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, Film Heritage Foundation, Janus Films and The Criterion Collection, with funding provided by the Golden Globe Foundation.

“Anything signed by Satyajit Ray must be cherished and preserved; but the nearly-forgotten ‘Days and Nights in the Forest’ is a special/particular gem,” Anderson said. “Made in 1970. Modern and novelistic. Ray worked in terrain perhaps more familiar to Cassavetes. A clash/negotiation between castes and sexes. Urbans and rurals. Selfish men and...

Anne Émond’s Peak Everything opens on Adam Tremblay, a 45-year-old kennel owner whose days bleed together under a cloud of climate dread. Shot in Quebec’s outlying countryside, the film marries a light romance to the rumble of storms and tremors—real and imagined—suggesting that personal hope can emerge even as the world feels unmoored.

When Adam’s therapeutic lamp fails, he dials customer service and meets Tina, a spirited support agent whose sunny voice pierces his gloom. Their phone exchanges—underscored by distant thunder—set a tone where grounded emotion meets surreal spectacle.

Émond balances a small-town feel with hints of looming disaster, inviting viewers to consider how love and anxiety coexist in an era when global cinema, from Bollywood to European art houses, is embracing stories of inner and outer turmoil.

Characters in Contrast

At the center is Patrick Hivon’s Adam, whose quiet routine—walking dogs,...

Camille reigns supreme at a French sports-study boarding school, his every jab and uppercut marking him as the nation’s junior boxing champion. Yet the moment he plummets ten metres down a rocky incline, the gravity of his world shifts—muscles stiffen with phantom pain, confidence fractures and a once-tight brotherhood begins to splinter. Set against a backdrop of echoing gymnasiums and mist-shrouded woods, Wild Foxes threads high-octane fight sequences with hushed forest vignettes, creating a rhythm that echoes the push-and-pull of physical mastery and introspection.

The film’s environment recalls the focused energy found in Indian parallel-cinema classics, where the body often becomes both canvas and battleground—think Mrinal Sen’s explorations of societal constraints or the visceral realism of contemporary sports dramas like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. Carnoy’s camera shifts from steady wide shots in the ring to handheld immediacy, mirroring Camille’s fluctuating sense of control. The forest,...

Humanity’s last refuge drifts among the clouds, where arboreal platforms stretch into a pastel sky after Earth enters a “Great Fallow.” In this far-future tableau, 10-year-old Arco aches to join his family’s time-travel missions but remains grounded by age-based regulations. One night, he borrows his sister’s rainbow-woven cape and its refracting crystal, hurling himself into the unknown—and crash-lands in the year 2075.

There, he meets Iris, a young girl sheltered beneath transparent domes that rise at the first hint of climate-driven storm. Her only constant companion is Mikki, a caregiving robot whose gentle humor offers warmth against the dome’s cool interiors. When Iris discovers the disoriented traveler, she faces a choice between obeying safety protocols and answering a deeper call to friendship.

This sequence frames a dialogue between high-concept science fiction and intimate coming-of-age drama. Arco’s skyborne colonies echo the grand visions of Studio Ghibli’s floating cities,...

The film opens on a vast horizon where grey sea and pale sky merge, a visual motif recalling the austere tableaux of Indian parallel cinema’s salt flats in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali. Here, 12-year-old Nanning stands barefoot on the North Frisian shore, wind tugging at his uniform, a silent witness to history’s collapse. Time is April 1945, and the island’s rhythm—be it the drip of melting snow or the distant drone of Raf fighters—anchors us in those final wartime days.

At its heart lies a simple yet profound journey: a boy’s search for white bread, butter and honey to revive his grieving mother. This quest echoes the mythic errands of Bollywood’s golden-era heroes, whose offerings often serve as portals into wider cultural reckonings. The director’s choice to frame each errand as a discrete episode recalls the chaptered narratives of Amol Palekar’s films,...

Iraqi writer/director Hasan Hadi finds a most unusual way into the story of Saddam Hussein, who served as president of his country until the U.S. invasion in 2003 overthrew his reign, which was marked by terror and tyranny.

In Hadi’s film “The President’s Cake,” the story is told via a nine-year-old girl, Lamia (Banin Ahmad Nayef), who is forced, as part of a ritualistic school celebration of their Iraqi president, to prepare him a cake. “The President’s Cake” premieres in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight this Friday, May 16, and is looking for distributors around the world. IndieWire shares a clip below.

Here’s the official synopsis: “While people across 1990s Iraq struggle to survive the war and food shortages, Saddam Hussein requires each school in the country to prepare a cake to celebrate his birthday. Despite her efforts to avoid getting picked, 9-year-old Lamia is chosen among her classmates. The...

Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson picks up where the 2019 exposé left off, tracing Wade Robson and James Safechuck’s quest for justice through civil courts. Filmmaker Dan Reed frames their decade-long battle with the clarity of a vérité documentarian, intercutting split-screen Zoom hearings with archival footage.

This approach calls to mind India’s parallel cinema of the 1970s and ’80s, when directors like Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani foregrounded marginalized voices against institutional power. Here, survivors replace protagonists of bygone social dramas, their testimony standing in for the raw authenticity those Indian auteurs prized.

As with Satyajit Ray’s humanist eye, Reed captures fleeting expressions—Robson’s tight jaw, Safechuck’s distant gaze—to convey internal conflict without didactic narration. The editing rhythm mirrors street montages from Bollywood’s New Wave, shifting between press backlash and small-town courtroom whispers.

A sparse musical score underscores emotional weight, recalling the minimalist...

Subhash K Jha looks back at the Parineeti Chopra and Ayushmann Khurrana’s Meri Pyaari Bindu released eight years ago. Plus, as a bonus, in a throwback interview from 2017, we hear from Parineeti Chopra about the film, working with Ayushmann, and what it was like to sing for the film.

Sometimes, a debutant director shows a spark that never quite lights up the screen. In Meri Pyaari Bindu, which completes eight years this week, displays a keen eye for Kolkata’s eccentricities: the trams and the fast-food lanes, the Durga idol silhouetting the hero’s suicide attempt, the loud boisterous parents of the Bengali protagonist Abhi…. so-called, so that the theme song of his love story could be ‘Abhi na jao chod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahin.’

There is a lot to ‘get’ in Meri Pyaari Bindu, including its corny cross references to films about unrequited love like Karan Johar...

“Reeling,” Yana Alliata’s striking debut, greets us with a single, fluid take that guides Ryan (Ryan Wuestewald) across his family’s O‘ahu estate. The shot’s patient choreography—reminiscent of the long takes in Satyajit Ray’s Charulata or Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s early work—invites us into Ryan’s fractured world as he rediscovers faces and places made strange by haunting gaps in his memory. The luau’s sunlit warmth and rhythmic beat of drums evoke the communal rituals of Bollywood’s colorful crowd scenes, only here they underscore a growing dissonance: laughter and volleyball amid an undercurrent of isolation.

Much like the parallel cinema of India, which privileged human struggle over spectacle, “Reeling” blends scripted drama with improvised moments drawn from Alliata’s real-life friends and family. The result is a palpable authenticity—every roasted pig and whispered greeting feels rooted in genuine emotion. Over a lean 70 minutes,...

Tom Cruise is in London to receive the honorary BFI Fellowship. On his trip, however, he appears to have made time for a leisurely stroll up one of the city’s most iconic buildings.

On Sunday afternoon, the Mission: Impossible actor was photographed on the roof of the BFI IMAX building in London. It’s unclear how exactly the actor scaled up the roof, but we’ve confirmed with sources close to Cruise that it was indeed him.

From the footage, which you can view below, you can see the BFI IMAX building is currently wrapped in an advertisement for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Paramount Pictures will launch the eighth installment in the franchise in the U.S. on May 23. Before that, Cruise will debut the film in Cannes next week. The movie will play Out of Competition on May 14 with Cruise, director Christopher McQuarrie, and the cast walking the famous red carpet.

Amy Wang’s debut feature opens on a deceptively familiar scene: a shy Chinese-American girl pinching her nose before a classroom mirror. Set against a hall lined with oversized prom-queen portraits, Slanted mixes high-school comedy rhythms with body-horror jolts to ask a deeply urgent question: How far will someone go to claim acceptance? At its core is Joan Huang, whose longing to be crowned prom queen drives her into the offices of Ethnos—a clandestine clinic promising an “ethnic modification” that transforms her into the blonde, blue-eyed Jo Hunt.

Joan’s journey reflects a timely global trend in films that explore mutable identity, echoing recent South Korean and European titles grappling with digital self-image. Yet there’s a clear parallel with Indian parallel cinema of the 1970s and ’80s, when filmmakers like Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani used everyday settings to critique social pressures. Wang borrows that realism—portraying a janitor father’s quiet dignity,...

Seven films down with an eighth and final edition launching in cinemas this month, Mission: Impossible is undoubtedly one of contemporary cinema’s most enduring franchises.

But back in 1996, what made a young Tom Cruise, red hot in Hollywood thanks to hits like A Few Good Men and Interview with the Vampire, board the spy thriller?

“It was the music,” Cruise joked this evening in London, where he took part in a wide-ranging discussion about his career onstage at the British Film Institute. “I loved the theme music.”

The first Mission film was Cruise’s first credit as a producer, and he told the crowd in London that he sought the franchise out because he was interested in investigating how he could change the action genre.

“It was about looking at Mission and thinking ‘what can we do with action’,” he said. “It was about how I can evolve action...

Tom Cruise has spoken for the first time about how he suggested to Stanley Kubrick that his then wife Nicole Kidman star opposite him in 1999s Eyes Wide Shut “because obviously she’s a great actress.”

The actor makes the rare public acknowledgement of Kidman’s thespian abilities in the May issue of Sight and Sound, the film magazine published by the British Film Institute.

Cruise will be honoured by the BFI on Monday with the awarding of a distinguished BFI Fellowship.

He joins the ranks of other BFI Fellows including giants of the calibre of David Lean, Bette Davis, Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, Thelma Schoonmaker, Derek Jarman, Martin Scorsese, Satyajit Ray, Barbara Broccoli, Michael G Wilson, Spike Lee and Christopher Nolan.

The actor-impresario will also discuss his career In Conversation at the BFI cinema complex on London’s Southbank on Sunday evening. Cruise activity is at full speed ahead...

Akshay Kumar’s Kesari Chapter 2 Enters IMDb Top 250(Photo Credit –Dharma Productions)

Many diehard entertainment enthusiasts might already know that the globally popular movies and TV shows database portal IMDb houses a list of the top 250 Indian movies of all time, according to their IMDb user ratings. A brand-new entrant, Kesari Chapter 2, has just cracked the coveted list.

Kesari Chapter 2 Cracks IMDb Top 250

In a fantastic update for Indian cinephiles, the critically acclaimed historical courtroom drama Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh, starring Akshay Kumar and R. Madhavan, has cracked the IMDb top 250 Indian movies list. As of now, Kesari Chapter 2 is on Rank 244 of the IMDb list. The film was released in theatres on 18th April 2025 and received rave reviews from many critics and viewers. The courtroom drama has a user rating of 8.3/10 on IMDb.

Here’s Why It’s a Big Victory...

Quentin Tarantino will be the guest of honour at Cannes Classics, the repertory cinema strand of Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection.

Tarantino will present two western films by George Sherman – 1949’s Red Canyon, and 1950’s Comanche Territory – and will take part in a discussion with critic and filmmaker Elvis Mitchell.

Scroll down for the full selection of Cannes Classics titles

The Classics lineup includes the Cannes pre-opening film, a 4K restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 The Gold Rush, restored by the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory at the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna. Mk2 Films is arranging a worldwide re-release of the...

Quentin Tarantino will be guest of honor of Cannes Classics this year with a special tribute devoted to late low-budget westerns director George Sherman.

The Cannes regular, who won the Palme d’Or winner for Pulp Fiction and President of the Jury in 2004, will share his passion for Sherman’s work with screenings of two of his westerns made for Universal Pictures – Red Canyon and Comanche Territory – in one of his most creative periods.

Tarantino will participate in a conversation about Sherman moderated by critic and documentary filmmaker Elvis Mitchell.

Other highlights of the program devoted to classic cinema include a pre-opening screening of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, to mark the centenary of its making, as well as a 25th anniversary screening of Amores perros by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, in the presence of director, and the 50th anniversary screening of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Shia Labeouf...

Bruno Dumont’s The Empire – Season 1 plunges an extraterrestrial struggle into the windswept dunes of Northern France, where mythic forces lurk beneath fishing‑village calm. Across six episodes (approximately three hours total), the creator who once championed social‑realist austerity turns his lens toward metaphysical farce.

Set in French (with subtitles), the series riffs on space‑opera rituals through a self‑aware prism. Two alien orders—the luminous Ones and shadowy Zeros—assume human guises among villagers as they contest the fate of Freddy, a toddler prophesied to become ultimate evil. Dumont recruits Lyna Khoudri (Line), Anamaria Vartolomei (Jane), Brandon Vlieghe (Jony), Fabrice Luchini (Belzébuth) and Camille Cottin (the Ones’ queen), alongside returning non‑actors as earnest gendarmes.

Deadpan dialogue, sudden musical interludes and widescreen compositions recall the emotional clarity of parallel cinema in India—where Satyajit Ray once used serene landscapes to probe spiritual conflict—and Bollywood’s emerging sci‑fi ambitions,...

As Bombay Talkies celebrates 12 years since its release, director Dibakar Banerjee speaking with Subhash K Jha, talks about and his part of the incredible anthology, Star, which starred Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Sadashiv Amrapurkaras.

Your segment entitled Star of the omnibus Bombay Talkies is recalled with much fondness.

I absolutely loved working with Nawazuddin, Shubhangi Bhujbal, and all the other amazing Marathi stage and screen actors on this. That little girl must have grown up now! Also, Samreen Farooqi and Shabani Hassanwalia, my co-creators, were the research and ideological force behind the story! I remember the amazing time I had with flautist Rakesh Chaurasia on the music.

What prompted you to tackle this quirky story?

It was based on a Satyajit Ray story. It all started with my hero, Satyajit Ray. It paved the way for two or three more such short films, all lots of fun.

I believe this was Sadashiv Amrapurkar’s last film.

Sujoy Ghosh’s Letter to Satyajit Ray (Photo Credit – Instagram/Twitter)

Indian filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh, who is well-known for directing terrific thrillers like Kahaani, Jaane Jaan, and Badla, took to his social media platform earlier today. In his X (Twitter) post, he recollected an old yet interesting incident from the year 1989 when he wrote to ‘The Apu Trilogy’ director Satyajit Ray asking for a job. He further confessed that in the letter, he wrote that he was willing to do any job provided he (Satyajit Ray) would teach me how to draw. Because he loved Ray’s illustrations and the stories he wrote and told.

Sujoy Ghosh’s First Rejection

Incredibly, Satyajit Ray was courteous and humble enough to send a reply to a stranger asking for a job. You can read the contents of the letter written by Satyajit Ray to Sujoy Ghosh here.

let me tell you a story of rejection.

Sixty-nine years after its release, Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali remains India’s most acclaimed film, the incontestable masterpiece. No two ways about it.

And rightly so. I saw the film again last evening, hoping to find something negative to stain the flawless pastiche of poverty.

Sorry, Pather Panchali is irreproachably brilliant. In a little more than two hours it transports us into that austere yet lyrical little hamlet in West Bengal where every meal is a blessing, and where the population is so divorced from urbaneness even a radio seems a far cry. The joy that Ray’s characters seek in the mundane is the joy that Ray embraces and celebrates in this timeless tale of love, grief, and hunger.

The insulated world of Pather Panchali is its biggest takeaway. There is an innocence at the heart of the narration, which only the most uncorrupted can embrace. Inexperienced instinctive...

From its first moments on Disney+, the four-episode Suspect transforms familiar true-crime tropes into a study of identity and institutional failure. Jeff Pope structures the narrative with precise economy: two episodes build toward the pivotal 22 July 2005 sequence, and the remaining installments trace the fallout like an inquiry unfolding in real time. This format echoes the discipline of parallel cinema in India, where stories of individual lives reflect broader social fractures.

Against the backdrop of the 7 July London attacks and the subsequent copycat bomb plot, the series anchors itself in the fate of Jean Charles de Menezes. A young Brazilian electrician, he emerges as an everyman caught in a tidal wave of fear and miscommunication. There’s no melodrama here—only the stark contrast between routine morning rituals and the rapid escalation within the surveillance unit.

The Stockwell station shooting is staged with the raw immediacy of handheld cinematography, each camera...

Satyajit Ray’s 1969 visual rendition of Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury’s children’s fantasy “Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne” (Ggbb), along with its later extension titled “Hirak Rajar Deshe” (1980), which was originally written by Satyajit Ray himself, has been inhabiting the center of a popular polemic in West Bengal and Bangladesh for ages now, which forays into arguing that these two visual pieces are more than what they seem and must not be understood simply as children’s cinema. Not only has a flux of academic and non-academic articles on these two films kept coming throughout all these years, but the duology has also been, for a long time, significantly central to the space of popular political praxes (mostly in the left milieu).

The current regime in India (led by the National Democratic Alliance) has, on multiple occasions, been analogized with “Hirak Raja” (The King of Hirak) by the West Bengal faction of the opposition,...

Aontas opens on the aftermath of a Credit Union robbery in a windswept Northern Irish village. From that first, blood-stained shot, the narrative moves backward, each scene recontextualizing the one before it.

McCann’s deliberate storytelling—supported by Sorcha Nic Giolla Mhuire’s crisp editing—recalls non-linear experiments in world cinema, from Christopher Nolan’s time-bending thrillers to daring narrative turns in India’s parallel stream. Yet Aontas grounds its structure in the everyday, inviting comparisons to Bollywood dramas where atmosphere and character reveal carry as much weight as plot.

Visually, Damien Elliott’s lens captures neon-tinged streets and the muted hues of rural Antrim, while Daithí Ó Dronaí’s subtle synth score marries Irish folk resonance with global noir moods. The film’s quiet tension—echoing the restraint of Satyajit Ray’s social dramas—asks viewers to assemble motive, identity, and emotion piece by piece, without flashy mechanics or exposition.

Las Tres Sisters opens with Mar Novo’s camera tracing the dusty path to Talpa de Allende, where three Mexican-American sisters—Maria, Sofia and Lucia—converge on a six-day pilgrimage. Maria’s concealed diagnoses—one shared with her devoted husband, another kept from her siblings—set the narrative tension.

Scenes shift between bawdy campfire banter and panoramic vistas, underscoring shifts in mood from intimate revelation to rustic grandeur. Estrangement reverberates in every exchange: childhood bonds fray under the weight of secrets, faith and rivalry.

Mar Novo’s direction recalls the observational style of Indian parallel cinema, evoking Satyajit Ray’s quiet humanism and the road-trip freedom of mainstream Bollywood hits like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. The film’s bilingual dialogue mirrors contemporary global cinema’s interest in linguistic authenticity—similar to Deepa Mehta’s portrayal of diaspora in Water.

Cinematographer’s use of warm earth tones evokes symbolic ties to heritage,...

A lot of what has gone into the exceptionally lucid Rima Das’s enormously cogent sequel to Village Rockstar, seems casual, at least as far as the visuals are concerned.

But look closer. Every frame in Village Rockstars 2 has a careful thought, a ruminative construct behind it. This is the kind of art where we can easily miss the trees for the forest.

Eight years have passed since we first met Dhunu in the unforgettable Village Rockstar. Dhunu still dreams of playing her rickety guitar with a band on stage and making a decent income out of her passion for music. Regrettably, that scourge called life has caught up with her. There isn’t much music here, but there are slabs of it, yes. But the joy of playing on stage is rapidly waning.

Innocence is no longer a shield from the whiplashes of daily living. Not when you belong...

It all began with the first film, 1955’s Pather Panchali; considered a masterpiece still to this day. In this fascinating feature, Subhash K Jha turns the focus on Satyajit Ray, The Father of Indian films. The writer, director, and composer went on to create 36 brilliant films, and his legacy as a master storyteller and filmmaker lives on.

What was the world doing when you first saw Pather Panchali for the first time? I must have been 18 or 19 when I met Apu and Durga for the first time. They were so close I could touch their heartbeat. I don’t know what happened to Subir Banerjee and Runki Banerjee, who played Apu and Durga. But the two siblings in Pather Panchali have remained a part of our lives since 1955.

A year later, Apu was a gawky youngster in Aparajito in pursuit of his dreams while his mother languished in the village.

Is Mithya, now streaming on Amazon, the best film of 2025? Hard to say. It defies any concrete evaluation, as it floats in a world where emotions are alchemized into amorphous spirits.

Once in a blue moon, we get an Indian film that tears away a part of us irretrievably. Kannada writer-director Sumanth Bhat’s is a haunting study of grief and healing, as an eleven-year-old boy copes with emotions that he is not mature enough to understand, let alone process.

The introspective procedural is left unvarnished and unbeautified: all we see is the raw, hurting boy trying to make his way, stumbling, kicking, through a world he barely comprehends.

The film begins with Mithya (Athish Shetty) uprooted cruelly from his home in Maharashtra to a village in Karnataka after his parents’ abrupt and suspicious passing. Mithya’s aunt (his deceased mother’s sister) and uncle take him in and try...

Living the Land opens like a rural coming‑of‑age epic that traces one child’s shifting sense of belonging amid fields on the brink of transformation. Central is Xu Chuang, a ten‑year‑old left in his extended family’s care in Henan in 1991, as China’s social fabric begins to realign. The narrative follows a single cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter, offering glimpses of four generations bound by ancestral ritual.

Huo Meng alternates between austere, muted frames of kilns and dry earth and brief bursts of lyricism, such as a vividly lit wedding procession punctuated by firecracker echoes. Funerals and festivals flow into one another, underscoring how life’s milestones carry equal weight.

When a lone tractor arrives, it stands out like an outsider challenging centuries‑old farming customs. For global viewers, there are hints of India’s parallel cinema—think the quiet observation of Ray...

Cottontail unfolds as a poignant cross‑continental quest sparked by a dying wish: a Japanese widower must carry his late wife’s ashes from Tokyo to England’s Lake District. The film contrasts Tokyo’s neon‑lit crowds with the misty calm of Windermere, using each location to mirror stages of grief and acceptance. In the city, Kenzaburo’s solitary routines—a stolen packet of octopus, a silent toast to an empty seat—establish his inner void. When he arrives in Cumbria, rolling hills and rain‑slicked lanes become a canvas for quiet reflection and unexpected warmth.

At its emotional core, Kenzaburo’s mission—to honor Akiko’s childhood memories by scattering her ashes where she once chased rabbits—anchors the narrative in a simple yet profound act of devotion. Patrick Dickinson balances gentle humor with moments of stillness, allowing viewers to share in Kenzaburo’s uncertainty.

Cinematically, the film...