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Forever has officially been dethroned from its #1 spot on Netflix's Top 10 Shows, with American Manhunt: Osama Bin Laden taking its place only a day after its delayed release. Forever, a coming-of-age romance series, was released just last week on May 8, 2025, and quickly climbed Netflix's charts, overcoming hits like You and The Four Seasons. Based on the 1975 novel by legendary YA author Judy Blume, the show's first season managed an impressive 96% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes, earning Forever a confirmed second installment. This week, however, Netflix's Osama bin Laden documentary is on top.

American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden hit Netflix on May 14, 2025, and, just a day later, it has officially claimed the #1 spot for the United States. This knocks Forever down to second place, followed by Bad Thoughtsand Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story (the latter being another documentary series). The top Netflix shows from last week, The Four Seasons and You,...

Subhash K Jha revisits Subhash Kapoor’s excellent Jolly Llb, featuring Boman Irani and Arshad Warsi, that engaged audiences in 2013.

It’s not often that a film manages to hit us in the solar plexus with a statement on an epidemic social disease and yet succeeds in telling a story so engaging you want to jump out of your seat and applaud the enterprising spirit that surges through the veins of this equipoised saga of the judge, the judged and the damned.

What ails the legal system in our country? We could go on and on about that, and still not be anywhere close to solving the conundrum of legalese. Subhash Kapoor’s brilliantly scripted Jolly Llb seeks to examine the loopholes in the legal system through which the rich and the privileged manage to go scot-free after committing terrible crimes. In this case, it’s a young tycoon mowing...

The streets of Herat, Afghanistan, are paved not with gold but with scrolling code in the spirited drama “Rule Breakers.” Teacher and startup owner Roya Mahboob believes in the transformative possibilities of computers. Portrayed with a mix of stubbornness and smarts by Nikohl Boosheri, Roya is the kind of ponderer who sees images from computer screens and lines of iridescent code on the building walls and roadways of Herat.

“The first time I touched a computer, it was like a light in the dark,” the young educator says, standing in front of a classroom of rapt high school girls in Herat Province. Something similar could be said of “Rule Breakers,” which tells the story of Roya and the four gifted students she enlists for Afghanistan’s first robotics team.

While director Bill Guttentag leans into the rules of genre more than breaks with them, the film is a beam of light — about math,...

Kazakhstan’s film industry is set to significantly boost with the upcoming feature “Bauryna Salu,” which has executive production support from famed Afghan filmmaker Siddiq Barmak. This collaboration elevates the film to a serious candidate for the Academy Awards’ international feature category.

Askhat Kuchinchirekov’s film Bauryna Salu portrays an intimate story steeped in Kazakh tradition. It focuses on Yersultan, a young boy raised by his grandmother by a cultural practice in which first-born children are frequently nurtured by grandparents rather than their parents.

The narrative captures Yersultan’s emotional journey as he deals with familial separation. At the age of twelve, he must return to his estranged parents after his grandmother’s death. Critical acclaim has already been raw for this intimate representation. Film writer Siddhant Adlakha praised the film’s “stunning commitment to cinematic realism” and emotional depth.

Siddiq Barmak’s presence lends substantial significance to the project.

Acclaimed Afghan filmmaker Siddiq Barmak has joined Kazakhstan’s Oscar hopeful “Bauryna Salu” as executive producer. The film, directed by Askhat Kuchinchirekov, is Kazakhstan’s submission for the international feature category at the Academy Awards.

“Bauryna Salu” follows a traditional Kazakh custom where firstborn children are raised by their grandparents rather than biological parents. The story centers on Yersultan, who grows up with his grandmother while feeling disconnected from his birth parents. When his grandmother dies, the 12-year-old must return to live with his estranged family.

“Its most visceral and intimate effects trickle out with a stunning commitment to cinematic realism. The result is a remarkable sleight of hand — a film in which every emotional possibility is broached,” wrote Siddhant Adlakha, reviewing the film for Variety.

The film stars Yersultan Yerman, Aidos Auesbay, Bigaysha Salkyn, Dinara Shymyrbay, Damir Daurenuly and Yerkin Berikuly. Distribution company Willa has secured worldwide rights, with...

Rotterdam Film Festival Sets ‘Head South’ As Opening Film

Jonathan Ogilvie’s post-punk, coming-of-age comedy Head South has been announced as the opening picture of the 53rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), running from January 25 to February 4. The festival has also teased a handful of early selections. They include Indian filmmaker Ishan Shukla’s dystopian, sci-fi animation Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust and U.S. director Billy Woodberry’s biodoc Mário, about African independence activist Mário de Andrade, which will both world premiere. Further confirmations include European premieres for Amanda Kramer’s So Unreal and Ann Hui’s Elegies as well as Omar Hilal’s Voy! Voy! Voy!, which is Egypt’s Oscar entry this year. The festival will unveil its full line-up on December 18.

Paul Schrader To Be Feted At Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Avellino Festival

U.S. director and screenwriter Paul Schrader will be honored with a Lifetime...

Lee Yong-Kwan, president and co-founder of the prestigious Busan International Film Festival (South Korea), the Cannes of Asia, will be the president of the jury of the 29th Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema (February 28 – March 7, 2023)

The International Jury :

The 29th Festival International des Cinémas d’Asie de Vesoul will take place from February 28 to March 7, 2023. It will be chaired by Korean Lee Yong-kwan, co-founder and president of the prestigious Biff (Busan International Film Festival), the Cannes of Asia. He is a brilliant academic with many roles including president of the Busan Film Library.

The other members of the international jury are Emily Jane Hoe, director of the Singapore International Film Festival (Sgiff) and an advocate for Singaporean independent cinema, Southeast Asia and new voices from Asia;

Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, Kazakh director, a regular at Fica, who came to Vesoul in 2002 to present In Paris, to receive in...

Before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when the Taliban ruled over the country, women were barred from public life, schools for girls were shuttered, and non-religious art was banned. In the subsequent two decades, women have become politicians, girls have been educated, and the country’s films have gained international attention. But that’s all threatened now that the Taliban has once again seized control of Afghanistan, Afghan filmmaker Sahraa Karimi wrote in a recent open letter.

Karimi, who in 2019 was appointed as the first woman to lead the state-run Afghan Film company, posted the letter on Twitter on Friday. In it, she pleads with members of the international film community to use their voices to fight the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan.

“Everything that I have worked so hard to build as a filmmaker in my country is at risk of falling,” Karimi wrote. “If the Taliban...

Photo: ‘Osama’/Ica Film Distribution Shot on location in Kabul with non-actors found on the streets, Siddiq Barmak’s ‘Osama’ (2003) is a powerful, modern distillation of neorealism and vérité that verges on documentary, telling the story of a girl’s struggle to survive in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan--on the brink of starvation, her family decides she must disguise herself as a boy to find work. It was the first film to be shot entirely in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s ban on filming in 1996 and has subsequently maintained the title of highest-grossing Afghan film of all time, topping the chart with a worldwide gross of $3,888,902 against a paltry budget of $46,000. While these relatively minuscule figures speak to the severely stifled development of arts in Afghanistan, they also emphasize the magnitude of Barmak’s accomplishment. Related article: Hulu’s ‘Ramy’: Brilliantly Humanizing Muslims and Their Everyday Struggles Related article: The Jewish Actresses...

When the Taliban held the dominant power in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, many of the country’s artworks were destroyed or left to decay, including a vast body of films. The Taliban regime also banned the creation and release of film, period.

On a new episode of the Post Reports podcast, The Washington Post visits archivists in Kabul working to wrest the country’s vast trove of documentary films — many of which depict a different, arguably more Westernized side of Afghanistan — from being lost to history.

“They compared the process of preserving them to preserving other artifacts that are crucial to understanding Afghan history,” said reporter Siobhán O’Grady. “These films show what Afghanistan was before, and what so many people still aspire to reclaim, whenever the war does eventually end.”

When the regime took hold, “The Taliban ended up storming the National Film Archive, and a lot of the films...

Think of an undercover cop pretending to be an outlaw in order to find incriminating evidence, or a soldier traveling incognito behind enemy lines during wartime. Now imagine a westernized Syrian filmmaker who identifies as a liberal Muslim going to Syria and embedding with radical Islamists by pretending to be one of them.

That’s what Talal Derki did in order to shoot “Of Fathers and Sons.” And what he documented is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. That’s why the movie, which focused on a jihadist’s family, took home the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Filmmaker Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Fest, is an Independent Spirit Award nominee, and could wind up on the documentary Oscar shortlist December 17.

“I wanted to tell the story from inside the world of Syria,” said Derki in a phone interview from his home in Berlin.

Think of an undercover cop pretending to be an outlaw in order to find incriminating evidence, or a soldier traveling incognito behind enemy lines during wartime. Now imagine a westernized Syrian filmmaker who identifies as a liberal Muslim going to Syria and embedding with radical Islamists by pretending to be one of them.

That’s what Talal Derki did in order to shoot “Of Fathers and Sons.” And what he documented is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. That’s why the movie, which focused on a jihadist’s family, took home the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Filmmaker Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Fest, is an Independent Spirit Award nominee, and could wind up on the documentary Oscar shortlist December 17.

“I wanted to tell the story from inside the world of Syria,” said Derki in a phone interview from his home in Berlin.

“The Postman,” the third feature from 2004 Golden Globe winner Siddiq Barmak (“Osama”), will be offered at Locarno’s co-production forum, the Open Doors Hub, one among an eight-project pack selected from the South Asian region.

David Wahab at Kabul-based Star Group produces “The Postman.” He previously worked on Zobair Farghand’s “Neighbors” and Homayoun Morouwat’s “An Apple from Paradise.” Founded in 2006, Star Group is a film company that is strongly rooted in Afghanistan’s present. Karsten Stöter at Germany’s Rohfilm, whose credits include Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Yuri’s Day,” is on to co-produce.

“The Postman” revolves around the devastating effects a son’s death from a rocket attack in Kabul has on his family. The mother buries herself in silence while the daughter runs the house. The father Amir, trying to find some relief, returns to his postman duties in a city surrounded by war. It is set...

Selection includes films from Siddiq Barmak, Yoon Gaeun and Min Bahadur Bham.

In South Korea, the Busan International Film Festival (Biff)’s Asian Project Market (Apm) has announced 28 titles from 17 countries for this year.

The 20th Apm’s selection includes projects from Golden Globe best foreign language film award winner Siddiq Barmak (Osama) and Berlinale Generation director Yoon Gaeun (The World Of Us).

Afghan filmmaker Barmak’s Georgia-France co-production The Pass is a wartime drama about two soldiers from opposite sides who are forced to cooperate in order to cross a dangerous mountain pass alongside refugees.

Korean director Yoon’s Sora is a drama about a middle school girl who finds out a secret about the new kid in the neighborhood.

According to organizers, the number of projects submitted to Apm this year went up “almost 25%” from the previous year to reach 317. In the 19 previous years, “a total of 499 projects have been selected with more than 220 of...

Seven more titles join co-production market.

The Sarajevo Film Festival (Aug 11-18) has finalised its selection for the 2017 CineLink Co-Production Market.

Joining seven previously announced titles are seven more feature projects, all of which are from Eastern Europe.

They include the latest feature from Georgian filmmaker George Ovashvili, whose 2014 film Corn Island won a Crystal Globe in Karlovy Vary and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. His project, The Pass, is being co-directed by Afghani director Siddiq Barmak, whose 2003 feature Osama premiered at Cannes and won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film.

Also attending the market with projects are Slovenian filmmaker Damjan Kozole, who won best director at Karlovy Vary in 2016 with Nightlife, and Bulgarian director Konstantin Bojanov, whose debut feature Avé premiered at Cannes in 2011 and whose latest film Light Thereafter premiered in Rotterdam this year.

Selected titles

Snow White Dies At The End (Macedonia)

Writer and Director: Kristijan Risteski

Producer: Kristijan Risteski, [link...

The 20th Busan International Film Festival (Biff) kicked off on Thursday night with a star-studded red carpet, fireworks and the world premiere of Indian film Zubaan.

Busan Mayor Suh Byung-su, who is also the festival’s organising committee chief, officially opened the festival’s 20th edition. “There have been many ups and downs, but despite that, because of all the hard work from people in the film industry, film fans and Busan citizens, the Busan festival hasn’t just become Asia’s major festival, but it’s on the way to becoming a world class film festival,” Suh said.

The ceremony was hosted by one of South Korea’s top actors Song Kang-ho (Snowpiercer) and star of award-winning film Osama, Marina Golbahari. The Afghanistan actress became the second non-Korean in Biff’s history to host the ceremony after Chinese actress Tang Wei in 2012.

Following the opening ceremony, Mozez Singh’s Zubaan received its world premiere. Starring [link=nm...

The Mumbai Film Festival has announced that Bruce Beresford will head its International Competition jury, while Asghar Farhadi will head the jury of the India Gold competition.

Beresford’s 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy won the Academy Award for best film and he was also nominated for best director in 1984 for Tender Mercies. Joining him on the International Competition jury are French actress Nathalie Baye, Japanese filmmaker Masato Harada and Indian actress Konkana Sen Sharma (Mr And Mrs Iyer, Omkara).

Joining Farhadi on the India Gold jury are Afghan director Siddiq Barmak (Osama), UK actor/director Waris Hussein, Australian editor Jill Bilcock and Roger Garcia, executive director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

“The jury is the core of every film fest and we have a proud legacy of having eminent personalities on our jury every year,” said Mumbai Film Festival director Srinivasan Narayan. “This year too we’re welcoming some very accomplished names, all masters...

Just released is the line-up for this year’s Independent Film Week, which will take place next month in New York, from September 16 to 20 at Lincoln Center. Announced today for Ifp’s centerpiece event of the year are both the industry events and the 165 projects which have been invited to participate in 2012′s Project Forum. A complete list of the projects can be found here, while on the industry side there are such new initiatives as the Ifp Producer of Marketing & Distribution Labs and a joint event of Ifp and Filmmaker magazine, “Reinvent: Media Arts for the 21st Century.”

Ifp’s Executive Director Joana Vicente said, “Ifp is proud to present this year’s Independent Film Week, which includes a truly original, exciting, and diverse slate of U.S. and international projects that are sure to pique the interest of our attending industry friends. Not only does Film Week remain...

Siddiq Barmak

Filmmaker Subhash Ghai will inaugurate the 10th Third Eye Asian Film Festival, Mumbai, at Ravindra Natya Mandir complex, Prabhadevi on Thurday, December 22, 2011.

At the opening ceremony, the ‘Asian Film Culture Award’ will be bestowed on noted Afghani filmmaker Siddiq Barmak. His film Osama will be screened on December 23, 2011.

The award presentation will be followed by screening of festival’s Opening Film, 11 Flowers, the latest film of Chinese director Xioanshuai Wang.

The week-long festival is dedicated to Dev Anand who passed away in London on December 3. He had inaugurated the first edition of the festival in 2002.

Some of the other important films to be screened at the festival are Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Distant, Italo Spinelli’s Gangor, Rajesh Pinjani’s Babu Band Bajaa and Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation.

Asian Culture Award to Afghani director Siddiq Barmak Homage to Dev Anand and Ashok Kumar 150th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore

The screening of the Chinese film, ’11 Flowers’, the latest production of the well-known director Xioshuai Wang, will throw open the 10th Third Eye Film Festival at the Ravindra Natya Mandi, Prabhadevi, at 6.30 p.m. on December 22.

The film, which marks its Indian premiere at the Festival, is about the dilemma of an 11-year-old boy after his chance meeting with a runaway murderer.

The Festival this year is being dedicated to the fond memories of Bollywood’s inimitable star and filmmaker of 65-year standing, Dev Anand, who passed away in London on December 3. As a gesture of paying tribute him, his memorable film, ‘Guide’ will be shown.

Organised by Asian Film Foundation in collaboration with P.L. Deshpande Maharashtra Kala Academy and supported by the state government of Maharashtra, the Festival...

• I'll be offering my early bird predictions for the films slated for the upcoming 08' edition of the Cannes film festival shortly, but here is a sure bet for one film that is well positioned to make a trip to the croisette. Circa 2003, the Director's Fortnight saw a stunning portrait from Afghan director Siddiq Barmak. Osama would claim three prizes at the fest, collect a Golden Globe win, it was especially well received by critics and elicited this response from me "...Barmak’s unflinching docu-drama depiction of the frightening Taliban terror is a traumatizing watch-but a necessary one. Filmed with the country’s only 35mm camera at a total cost of the price of used Volvo...". Listed as a project currently in post-prod, Barmak's Opium War tells the story of a U.S. chopper that crashes in an Afghan desert, leaving a white officer and a black soldier encounter

...

SEOUL -- Veteran filmmakers will mingle with aspiring first-timers at an increasingly internationalized 10th anniversary edition of the Pusan Promotion Plan, scheduled for Oct. 8-11 in the South Korean beach resort of Pusan, organizers said Tuesday.

The PPP -- under the Asian Film Market's umbrella since last year -- will feature 35 projects from 18 countries throughout Asia and several projects chosen from outside the region.

Broader than ever in geographical scope, this year's PPP includes international projects from Armenia and Nepal and seven co-productions with partners from outside Asia, including the U.S. and South Africa.

Chosen from 200 applications, the PPP selections this year include projects from such prominent producers as Terrence Chang ("Face/Off," Mission: Impossible II), Peter Fudakowski (Tsotsi), Tsai Ming-liang (The Wayward Cloud) and Hong Sang-soo.

With the mission of discovering and supporting promising Asian talent, the PPP has seen more than 90 of its 234 projects made into finished films. Among those titles are Siddiq Barmak's Osama, winner of the Golden Globe for best foreign language film in 2005; Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle, winner of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at Berlin in 2001; and Bong Joon-ho's The Host, which went on to become the highest-grossing film in Korean history.

LONDON -- The Sutherland Trophy, the British Film Institute's award for new talent in world cinema, went this year to Siddiq Barmak's Osama, organizers said Thursday evening. The annual prize, given out at the closing-night gala of the Times BFI London Film Festival, went to Afghanistan-born director Barmack for his film that details the story of a 12-year-old-girl living under the old Taliban regime. Barmack's film was chosen by an 11-person jury -- which included director Ben Hopkins, actor Lennie James and LFF artistic director Sandra Hebron -- from a shortlist of three films by first-time directors shown as part of the lineup of this year's event.

LONDON -- This year's shortlist for the Sutherland Trophy, the British Film Institute's award for new talent in world cinema, comprises Alain Guiraudie's No Rest for the Brave, Siddiq Barmak's Osama and Christoffer Boe's Reconstruction. The entries, announced Tuesday, are chosen by a jury from 12 movies by first-time directors showing during this year's London Film Festival, with a winner to be unveiled at Thursday's closing-night gala. No Rest for the Brave is billed as a dreamlike coming-of-age odyssey, Osama marks a first feature set against the backdrop of post-Taliban Afghanistan, and Reconstruction is an exploration of time, place and point of view. This year's 11-person jury includes director Ben Hopkins, actor Lennie James and London Film Festival artistic director Sandra Hebron. The Sutherland Trophy dates back to the 1950s, when it was first presented on behalf of the BFI by the Duke of Sutherland. Recent recipients include Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me), Asif Kapadia (The Warrior) and Delphine Gleize (Carnages).

A record-breaking 55 countries -- one more than last year -- have submitted films to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration in the foreign language film category for the 76th annual Academy Awards. A number of the films that have been entered into the Oscar race have already begun to earn a profile on the festival circuit. The Danish entry, Reconstruction, directed by Christoffer Boe, was awarded the Camera d'Or as best first film at this year's Festival de Cannes. Palm Pictures is distributing it domestically. Good Bye, Lenin!, from Germany and director Wolfgang Becker, recently picked up eight awards at the German Film Awards. Several of the entries screened at Cannes this year -- among them Hector Babenco's prison drama, Carandiru, from Brazil and Sony Pictures Classics; the Canadian entry, Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions, which Miramax plans to distribute domestically; and the Afghanistan entry, Osama, directed by Siddiq Barmak, whose distribution rights were picked up by United Artists.