“A film like ‘I Was at Home, But’ tests its audience and never tells them if they’re right, and therein lies the challenge. The point is not to “get” the film but to have thought about it and come up with a whole array of personal truths.”
“Gupta, with her immense treasure of emotions and movements, brings to life the dichotomies of extreme pain and extreme joy, and makes it all seem so relatable that it’s difficult to hold back tears.”
“There is seething, justified anger that underscores the plot of ‘Bhoga Khirikee’; an anger that could be used to create extremely radical female characters who pull the plot forward instead of becoming cardboard stand-ins for the filmmaker’s radical politics.”
“Hazarika’s is a voice that comes from outside of the Bollywood canon and reverberates sharp and hard throughout the cinemascape of the country. May it grow only louder.”
“While Springsteen takes the American dream and helps everyone navigate through its dismantling, Chadha packs it all up with ‘Blinded by the Light” and makes it speak to an entirely different country and a whole new generation.”
Bedatri Datta Choudhury Interviews Italian Director Laura Luchetti
“Apart from fantastic performances from its cast, especially Bomer and Patiño, Papi Chulo’s biggest strength is the subtlety and grace with which it deals with the wide cross-section of issues it touches upon.”
“For a film about an eternal conflict, ‘Non-Fiction’ is a strangely calming film. It quietly assures you that while a fight for permanence is natural, the need to change is also equally natural.”
“What could’ve been an intense peeking into the mind of a terrorist ends up being a somewhat naive, clinical recording of his wrongdoings.”
“‘Juze’ tells the story of an India we don’t often see in films, but an India that hurts, suffers and yet revolts and thrives.”
“For a play that is so much about macho-ness and the male code of honor, it is refreshing to watch Chatterjee give it a somewhat feminist tweak.”
“‘Nude’ is a caveat to our times; a warning that we are driving arts education to a point of redundancy with our politics…”
“To understand Ghosh’s cinema, it is important to understand the director’s gradual but persevering separation from gender binaries and roles.”
“Within the context of a cinema that is high-strung and often defined by its over-the-top, spectacle-driven family dramas, ‘Ribbon’ and its smallness (and everydayness) is not just a refreshing break but an extremely well-timed breaking of the mold.”
“Renzu’s film gives a face to the thousands of women featured in the papers, disturbingly called ‘half widows’ — not just defined by the lack of a husband, but also by this ‘half,’ not full, not a complete status of being.”
“If Murphy’s Law were to be made into a film, it’d look a lot like Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s ‘Long Live Brij Mohan!’ His production, in more ways than one, is also a metaphor for the city of Delhi.”
“‘Kho ki pa lü’ is about a lot of things, but it’s mostly about music. It is about Li, the songs that people sing when they cultivate rice in small müles.”
“In a country whose cinema is often just classified under the homogenous canopy of ‘Bollywood,’ a film in Sikkimese is not only a welcome change but also a political reversal of existing canons. It is a small but eventful beginning, a small step towards a more inclusive ‘Indian’ cinema.”
“In its thorough research and extensive reconstructing of the artist’s life, ‘Sonar Baran Pakhi’ is a document of celebration. Of the artist, the daughter, the mother. And the effortless rebel.”