Autohead is nothing short of an experience, and certainly one of the most interesting films I saw at this year’s MAMI film festival. The mockumentary’s strength is its stylistic storytelling which is as wholly absorbing as it is wildly entertaining. Director Rohit Mittal’s (who also plays the director in the film) use of the format ...
If there’s one Indian director whose films seem straight out of a novel, it has to be the man who’s won us over with gems like Iqbal and Dor. It isn’t just because of Nagesh Kukunoor’s storytelling skills but his eye for the tiniest of detail. He weaves them so beautifully in his stories. There’s something ...
Whodunit mysteries can be tricky; the reveal to the big build up may not always satisfy viewer expectations. This is the case with Kannada filmmaker Pawan Kumar’s second film. Although he initially crafts a compelling, intriguing narrative, the uninteresting, simplistic twists ultimately undermine the film. U-Turn is still worth watching for its intelligent writing and ...
The challenge with films that tell real-life stories (of public figures) is that the audience already has a broader picture of the narrative. The director’s ability to pull it off then is in the telling. And there are few storytellers in Hindi cinema like Neeraj Pandey. His debut A Wednesday still stays his best work ...
If you’re following Vijay Sethupathi’s meteoric rise in Tamil film industry, you know the brands of cinema he’s part of. On one hand, he does films the general Tamil audience prefers, on the other he tries to steer those audience to watch films he prefers to do. This year, Vijay had the space to do ...
A disquieting vignette of a society, Pink holds a mirror to everything that’s wrong with us. It shines a light on the vacuous values we live by to preen and preserve our social fabric. And men alone aren’t to be blamed, women stand equally complicit. A slow burn, Pink ruffles and rattles with its glaring observations. ...
This is not a man’s world. It’s a world where women are in charge. Welcome to Oppressed Majority! Written and directed by Eléonore Pourriat, Majorité Opprimée is a refreshing and nuanced take on gender role reversal. Now, this isn’t your typical short film. It’s a thought-provoking, eye-opening piece that flips societal norms on their head ...
From the opening song and credits, Baar Baar Dekho looks like the stuff perfect love stories are made of. Sweet, syrupy, straight out of a novel. Jai (Sidharth Malhotra) and Diya (Katrina Kaif) have been ‘in love’ before they even knew or understood what love meant. And like any regular couple, they are set to ...
Film critic and independent filmmaker Sudhish Kamath has subverted stereotypes with his unconventional style of storytelling. After Four-Letter Word (2006), Good Night Good Morning (2010), X – Past is Present (2014), Kamath is all set for his fourth – Side A Side B, a musical that explores the bittersweet heartache of first love. He tells Flickside what went into its ...
He looked prim and dapper, noticeable from about twenty feet afar in the crowd. In a grey, shiny blazer, Ranveer Singh looked straight out of a Raymond’s Complete Man ad. His beard and handlebar moustache (the look for his then upcoming film Ram Leela) meticulously covered the not-so-appealing contours of his face. The press conference was to begin ...
Directed by Rick Famuyiwa, HBO’s Confirmation (2016) shows us everything that’s wrong with the power-hungry politicians and sensation-hungry media. The film, more importantly, examines the gender inequality and the gross mishandling of sexual misconduct charges as narrow-minded victim-blaming tactics continue to prevail. This striking drama starts with TV news clippings showing the nomination of Clarence ...
Raam Reddy’s excellent debut feature Thithi is a rare Indian film. There’s great interest in providing textures (ingrained with realism) to the frame and imbuing character details rather than chasing greater narrative aspirations. The film does have a central familial turmoil and a string of conflicts, but what Raam wants us to witness is simplicity ...
A war film sans the clichés and the razzmatazz of a typical war film! Gone are the days of chases, face to face & hand to hand combat or tanks firing or machine guns booming. It’s the time of high-tech war where a call to kill is made not in the battle zone from bunker to ...
Our acquaintance goes back ten years. Anurag Goswami was studying Direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune back then. The Lucknow-based engineer, who gave up a lucrative career in Singapore to pursue film studies, is off to a steaming start. His diploma film Kaun Kamleshwar won the Satyajit Ray Foundation’s short film Award in ...
Think offbeat and few names come to mind. In his nearly two decades in the Hindi film industry, Vinay Pathak has experimented and entertained in a miscellany of roles, from Khosla ka Ghosla to Dasvidaniya, from Bheja Fry to Gour Hari Dastaan, each uniquely different from the other. Dabbling in different genres, he didn’t make the safest of choices, ...
Dipankar Sarkar
