カテゴリー: Culture
Upper-caste actor playing Dalit politician Mayawati shown dishevelled and holding broom in publicity for new filmA picture of a woman holding a broom. Anywhere else, the image might pass unnoticed. But in India the poster for the film Madam Chief Minis…
Kavita Puri’s Three Pounds in My Pocket is an extensive oral history of the lives of Indian and Pakistani migrants and their families, from partition to Cornershop“A lot of them had survived partition, they were living in difficult conditions, working …
With its unique blend of gossip, jokes and songs mixed with serious global issues, Kadal Osai has built a devoted audienceSelvarani Mari is a fisher and seaweed collector who lives on Pamban Island of Tamil Nadu, on the southernmost tip of India.Every …
This adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s Booker-winning novel about aspiration in modern India is teeming with energy and sadnessThe White Tiger is a story of servitude, resentment and love – and what its hero calls “the contented smile that comes to the lip…
The streaming giants are making bold TV shows but the threat of censorship looms largeThis year’s Emmy awards, one of the biggest nights in global television, was particularly historic for India. It was the second year in a row that several Indian tele…
French documentarian Thomas Balmès checks in with the Himalayan monk he filmed back in 2013 to find him addicted to online romanceIn 2013, French documentary-maker Thomas Balmès made a film called Happiness, about an eight-year-old monk called Peyangki…
Police in China detain colleague of Yoozoo Games founder Lin Qi on suspicion of involvement in deathShanghai police have detained a man in relation to the suspected poisoning death of the wealthy founder of a video games company.Lin Qi, 39, died on Ch…
Runaway success of the story of Tanjiro – a boy who shows remarkable resilience in the face of obstacles – comes despite the coronavirus pandemicNot even a pandemic has been able to stop an animated film set a century ago from becoming Japan’s highest-…
Dhawan casts his son Varun in the role made famous in 1995 by Govinda, but little effort has been made to acknowledge the quarter-century sinceIt’s a tale of two Bollywoods this Christmas. Over at Netflix, Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, repre…
Anurag Kashyap kidnaps the daughter of Anil Kapoor in a mock-doc thriller that skewers India’s showbiz sceneAfter an undistinguished pandemic year, Indian cinema closes out 2020 with a postmodern surprise, at once nifty and nasty. Shot under the radar,…
Singer calls for release of Bua Noi, who has spent almost all her life at zoo in Bangkok shopping centreAfter freeing the “world’s loneliest elephant” from a life of misery in a Pakistani zoo, the singer Cher has turned her attention to the plight of a…
Devika Bhise as the widowed monarch Rani Lakshmibai shows the Victorian Brits, including Rupert Everett, what she’s capable of in this impressive dramaAs Rani Lakshmibai (Devika Bhise), the titular queen in this colourful historical epic, slices and di…
Bad-apple politicians put the squeeze on a hapless secretary in this tired pile of vengeful ghost mayhem Censorship may have been an issue in the past, but it’s striking how few horror films Indian commercial cinema has produced relative to those from …
Arush Nand is very good as a gay Tamil boy in Deepa Mehta’s coming-of-age drama set in a period building to civil war There is something a bit soapy and melodramatic about this queer coming-of-age drama from Sri Lanka, picked up by Ava DuVernay’s compa…
Screenings cancelled one day after release following anger over pun seen as racially offensiveThe fantasy film Monster Hunter has been pulled from Chinese cinemas one day after its release after a scene where characters make a pun with the words “knees…