カテゴリー: Culture
Jeremy Clarkson’s reality TV show has particular appeal for young people with no experience of farmingTo one Chinese reviewer, Jeremy Clarkson is “a stupid old British man with too much money who farmed for a year without harvesting anything”. To anoth…
Cannes film festivalPayal Kapadia’s glorious Cannes competition selection is an absorbing story of three nurses that is full of humanityThere is a freshness and emotional clarity in Payal Kapadia’s Cannes competition selection, an enriching humanity an…
Societal threats are already heavy for medical student Mariam when bereavement leaves her undefended and the story untethers from realismPakistan’s patriarchal society is a too credible source of horror in this promising feature debut from Canadian-Pak…
Flickering Lights review – how the arrival of electricity heralded peace in a turbulent Indian state
Years in the making, this documentary shows preparations for the arrival of mains power in a village in Nagaland as part of a deal with the Indian governmentWith great patience over a period of years, Indian film-makers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Sriniv…
Standup has enjoyed a rapid rise in India over the last decade, and now its leading lights are conquering the Edinburgh fringe and packing out the Royal Albert Hall. Where better to take aim at the legacy of Empire …In the summer of 2010, Anuvab P…
And They Lived … Ever After is a south Asian book of reworked European classics written by women with disabilities A deaf Snow White, a blind Cinderella, a neurodivergent ugly duckling and a wheelchair-using Rapunzel: classic European fairytales have b…
Drag star celebrated with massive support at home after taking top prize in the long-running US reality showA drag queen has sparked national celebration as the “pride of Taiwan” and won praise and congratulations from the island’s president after winn…
Lim Ki-mo first heard Brazilian music 50 years ago in his home town of Busan; now his consular crooning marks a triumph of soft powerBrazil’s latest music sensation grinned from ear to ear as he moseyed down Copacabana beach contemplating his unusual r…
Vidya Balan shines in this witty remake that sees a married couple, both cheating on each other, on the verge of breaking upThe algebra of love is a multiple-choice conundrum in Shirsha Guha Thakurta’s debut, a witty remake of Azazel Jacobs’ romance Th…
Documentary reveals the cost to Nepalese villagers of harvesting a supposed aphrodisiac that sells for more than gold in ChinaEvery year, thousands of Nepalese villagers make their way to the Himalayan foothills in search of a fungus called yarsagumba….
Shah Muhammad Rais was devastated when Taliban destroyed his shop, but now he is sending books to Afghanistan via the internetShah Muhammad Rais first opened his bookshop in the Afghan capital in 1974. By 2003, when his story was made famous by the bes…
In 2017, a crying Asom Khan became the face of Myanmar’s refugees. Now 15, he has discovered his own passion for photographyHis own sign language of sweeping, dramatised gestures is rarely fully understood by those outside Asom Khan’s closest friends a…
Footage of green-fingered BBC presenter obscured from waist down to hide ‘symbol of US imperialism’His calm demeanour and wholesome vocation have apparently endeared him to one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world. But there is something abou…
Epic new TV adaptation of the 1975 novel reignites interest in the exploits of the Kent sailor William AdamsOn a backstreet in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo, between a seafood wholesaler and a jewellery shop, stands a simple monument. It marks the f…
Politically-inspired biopic of Indian politician who opposed Gandhi’s non-violence is hamstrung by its own lack of action Of all the hot takes you expect to see when you go to the cinema, the suggestion that Mahatma Gandhi was overrated is perhaps low …