“Sacred Games 2 shows the real India”

Actor Jatin Sarna talks about Sacred Games and his upcoming film ‘83 where he will play cricketer Yashpal Sharma The Netflix original series Sacred Games has brought many young and talented actors into limelight. One character that has captured everyone’s attention other than the series’ protagonist Ganesh Gaitonde (played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is Bunty. Essayed […]

An ode to love and alienation

Ek betuke aadmi ki afrah raatein attempts to locate communal riots in a wider historical legacy of the nation state, while investigating individual stories of caste and subjugation through gender Fyodor Dostoevsky is on a slow and laborious walk in Muzaffarnagar and Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. He notices another gentleman, Munshi Premchand, savouring the lives and […]

Brownfacing in Bollywood

Bhumi Pednekar’s skin colour in Bala is an outrage. Why is nobody protesting? The newly released film Bala, starring Ayushmann Khurrana and Bhumi Pednekar, is problematic. It not only takes the insulting practice of brownfacing in Bollywood to a new level of blackfacing but does so under the guise of denoucing false conceptions of beauty […]

Not a matter of joke

Bollywood’s tryst with sexism has been a long-standing one. But it seems filmgoers are in no mood to take any more of it “Biwi se sex maang lo, toh tum bikhaari; Biwi ko sex na de toh hum attyachari; aur kisi tarah jugaad laga ke usse sex haasil kar lein na toh balaatkari bhi hum […]

All set to go!

Model-turned-actor Vikramjeet Virk talks about his journey into Bollywood, international films and forthcoming web series From modelling to daily soaps, from working in the South film industry to his big Bollywood break – Vikramjeet Virk’s career has been a colourful one. “It’s been such a wonderful journey!” he says. Hailing from Haryana, Virk looks up […]

When cinema kills

Films can entertain, engage and enthral audiences. But can they motivate people to commit crimes? Do you remember Shah Rukh Khan’s Darr (1993)? The story revolved around a boy who starts obsessing over a girl. He goes on to stalk her, befriend her fiancé and kidnap her. In 2016, in a somewhat similar manner, a […]

In search of a happy ending

The Amazon Prime series ‘Modern Love’ is a reinvention of a ‘New York Times’ column about relationships Hollywood has perfected the art of taking a cliché, shaking it, not stirring it mind you, and giving us a Modern Love with a New York-sized olive to chew on. Fifteen years after they started a column called […]

An offbeat film fair

Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) directors Ritu and Tenzing talk about its journey, vision and challenges The eighth edition of the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) is scheduled to take place from November 7 to 10, 2019 at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA), McLeodganj, Dharamshala. DIFF is conceptualised by filmmakers Ritu Sarin and […]