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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.

Hong Kong International Film Festival Society has announced the 25 in-development projects selected for this year’s Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf). The line-up includes several projects produced by high-profile filmmakers, including Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda, India’s Aditya Vikram Sengupta and French producer and writer Sylvie Pialat.

Kore-eda is producing Yellow, the feature debut of Yamaura Miyoh, about a man who lives a life of self-punishment after a fatal car accident. Sengupta is producing Niladri Mukherjee’s debut Republic Of Mahalaxmi Apartment, which examines India’s majority rule issues through a single-mother tenant who becomes her housing estate’s public enemy when she flags a malfunctioning elevator.

Pialat (Les Miserables) is teaming with Chinese producer Nai An on Hu Wei’s feature debut, 49 Days, about a divorced Chinese couple who reunite in Paris to arrange their son’s funeral and confront their past.

Venice Fedeora award winner Aditya Vikram Sengupta (“Labour of Love”) brings his new Hindi-language project “The Employer” to India’s Film Bazaar co-production market.

The film follows Michael, a recently widowed chauffeur in Mumbai working for a veteran actress with political aspirations, whose life becomes entangled in both a missing diamond earring case and his maid’s personal crisis.

Sengupta’s previous films include “Labour of Love,” which won the Fedeora award for Best Debut Film at Venice, “Jonaki,” which premiered at Rotterdam, and “Once Upon a Time in Calcutta,” which debuted at Venice in 2021.

Sengupta drew inspiration from his own experiences in Mumbai. “I’ve been fascinated by the warmth of the people and this constant ambition and drive that people have,” Sengupta told Variety. “Everyone’s helping each other to move up in life.”

The director recounts how a real incident with his domestic worker, whose claimed that her son was seriously ill,...

Former Netflix producer Dimpy Agrawal’s production banner Gubbara Entertainment has unveiled a slate of six projects at India’s Film Bazaar, including a project starring Anasuya Sengupta, who made history as the first Indian actor to win best performance at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard for “The Shameless.”

Sengupta will headline short “Ma,” penned by Columbia University Mfa graduate Riddhi Talreja (“Sadak Chaap”), examining women’s identity and motherhood in contemporary Indian society. The project has attached cinematographer Amal Sudhakaran, whose work has appeared on Netflix, Amazon, and Discovery, with one credit gaining Emmy recognition.

The slate includes “Puthussery Police Case” from writer-director Nithin Lukose, whose debut “Paka: River of Blood” premiered at Toronto in 2021. The Kerala-set drama follows a lawyer investigating his father’s death against the backdrop of a tiger threatening a rural village.

“Ummeed,” a psychological horror exploring same-sex relationships and fertility in Delhi, comes from “Pari...

Cannes 2024 was a life-changing journey for Indian production designer-turned actor Anasuya Sengupta who won best actress at the festival’s Un Certain Regard strand for “The Shameless.”

Sengupta made her acting debut alongside several of her friends in Anjan Dutt’s music-themed “Madly Bangali” (2009) and served as director’s assistant to Claire McCarthy in Australian production “The Waiting City” the same year. Kolkata native, Sengupta then moved to Mumbai, home to the vast Bollywood industry. She wasn’t impressed by Bollywood and became a noted production designer and artist instead. Her credits in that field include Netflix’s “Selection Day” and “Ray” and feature films “Chippa” and “Good Morning Sunshine.” Acting stayed alive in the shape of the occasional commercial or short film.

Acting became front and center again when Bulgarian-American filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov was prepping for “The Shameless.” At one stage, when he was particularly disillusioned with the financing...

Anasuya Sengupta has become the country’s favorite, making history at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, which concluded on May 25. Sengupta became the first Indian to win the Best Actor award for her role in the film The Shameless. Following the official announcement of her remarkable achievement, the internet, and numerous Bollywood stars showered her with praise and congratulatory messages.

Reacting to the outpouring of love, Sengupta expressed her excitement about returning to India, saying, “Nothing beats the joy and happiness of an artist than getting recognition and winning accolades on an international platform.” The actress is undoubtedly on cloud nine after this historic win.

Sengupta’s award was in the Un Certain Regard segment, where she was recognized as the Best Actress for her powerful performance in The Shameless. Celebrated Bollywood personalities, including Alia Bhatt, Arjun Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, and Kiara Advani, took to social media to share their...

Bulgarian-American filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov’s Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard selection “The Shameless” has taken 14 years to come to fruition.

Bojanov previously directed the documentary “Invisible” (2005), followed by his Cannes-debuting fiction feature debut “Avé” (2011). Post “Avé” and prior to his 2017 Rotterdam selection “Light Thereafter,” which starred Barry Keoghan and Kim Bodnia, Bojanov acquired the rights to William Dalrymple’s 2009 book, “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.” The idea at the time was to make a documentary cross referencing four different stories from the book, including one of a sex worker in Karnataka, southern India.

Bojanov scoured India to find real stories similar to the ones in the book and in 2014 he started filming in Karnataka, with a view to using the footage to attract finance for a feature-length documentary. During his research, the filmmaker also came across a young girl growing up in a family...

A radical vision of Indian womanhood collides with scattered storytelling in director Konstantin Bojanov’s “The Shameless,” a provocative queer drama laid low by its oblique narrative. Following two women destined for a life of sex work, the drama is lucid in its politics, but often opaque in its drama — a dynamic embodied by two wildly different lead performances.

Anasuya Sengupta is remarkable as “Renuka,” a Muslim woman who dons the moniker of a Hindu goddess while on the run from police. When “The Shameless” begins, her crime of killing a policeman is already in her rearview, forcing her to take refuge in a small-town brothel in Northern India. While in hiding, she meets Devika (Omara Shetty), a young, meek wannabe rapper whose enigmatic grandmother (Mita Vasisht) is a revered holy woman. Devika’s stern mother (Auroshika Dey) has condemned her to an eventual life of religiously-inspired devadasi sex work,...

New Delhi, April 4 (Ians) As conversational artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a talking point on social media, representatives from Indian schools and experts on Tuesday expressed divisive concerns over children’s exposure to the AI chatbot in the classrooms.

Schools around the world have already banned ChatGPT, citing concerns that the AI tool which has been helping people write poems, essays and even work papers, can provide inaccurate information and enable cheating.

According to Nikita Tomar Mann, Principal at Indraprastha Global School in Noida, as amazing and fascinatingly incredible as it appears, “ChatGPT is still at a nascent stage” for us to fully comprehend its ramifications.

“Schools must keep it at bay for the time being, till such time we understand its need and utility at the school level,” Mann told Ians.

Children should rather be trained to be doing their own research, assimilate information, and construct their own knowledge out of it.

Kolkata, March 9 (Ians) The Enforcement Directorate (Ed) probing the multi-crore teachers’ recruitment scam in West Bengal seems to be now entering the second phase of investigation focusing on the Bengali cinema link.

The central agency sleuths have summoned Tollywood actor Bonny Sengupta aka Anupriyo Sengupta in connection with the multi-crore scam. The actor has confirmed to the Ed that he will be going to the agency’s office at the central government office (Cgo) complex at Salt Lake in the northern outskirts of Kolkata during the current week.

Repeated attempts by Ians to contact Sengupta for his comments failed.

Sources said that the name of the actor surfaced following the cross-checking of the documents of Kuntal Ghosh, the arrested youth Trinamool Congress leader, who is currently in judicial custody.

Sources said that Sengupta will be questioned on whether there had been any financial transaction between him and Ghosh, and if yes for what purpose.

“Hawa” (Wind), the film that came like a new breeze to the Bangladeshi film industry, will be released on December 16 in Kolkata and the rest of West Bengal, and across India on December 30. The film, which is also Bangladesh’s top grosser, has been directed by Mejbaur Rahman Sumon.

Sun Music and Motion Pictures Ltd, the film’s production company, has said it will be distributed across India by the Singapore-based entity, Continental Entertainment Private Ltd (Cepl) via Reliance Entertainment.

“Hawa”, the myth, fantasy and mystery-thriller film, received a huge response from its fans in Bangladesh soon after its release in theatres in that country on July 29. Even after four months of release, it is still running in theatres and raking in business and getting love.

The film has received widespread critical acclaim and has been shown at numerous cross-border festivals and diaspora events. It has been nominated for the...