Jagran Film Festival awakens us to some great cinema Back after a three-year hiatus, prompted by the Coronavirus Covid 19, Jagran Film Festival (JFF) stuck to its base in Mumbai, the Cinépolis multiplex. It was held on four days, 12, 13, 14 and 15 October, 2023. JFF is one of the largest travelling film festivals in the world, and, probably, the only one of its kind in India. The International Film Festival of India, under the name Filmotsav, used to be held at different venues every a...

Good Newwz, Review: Madame Ovary Apologies to Gustave Flaubert, whose French novel, Madame Bovary, lends itself to the headline for this review. The title was too punny to escape, what with his famous trial of 1857, on charges of obscenity, and the subsequent classification of the work as a classic of modern realism. Among those who made films on this subject are Jean Renoir, Vincente Minnelli, Claude Chabrol and David Lean, not to mention our own Ketan Mehta’s Maya Memsaab. Good Newwz ...

Red carpet personalities attending the Diorama International Film Festival, New Delhi, 2019 15 January 2019: Sudhir Mishra, Neetu Chandra, David Dhawan, Boney Kapoor, Chitrangada Singh, Anubhav Sinha, Rumi Jaffrey, Ambassador Of Spain, Rafael Kapelinski 16 January 2019: Dariush Mehrjui, Giogio Franchini, Alka Yagnik, Philip Cheah, Rituparna Sengupta, Rumi Jaffrey, Mozhgan Taraneh, Actor, Iran, Rafael Kapelinski, Sanjay P Chahuhan, Rahul Mitra, Shaad Ali, Ajit Andhare, Utpal Acharya, A...

Love Sonia, Review:  Sister’s sibling search sifting sordid sex surroundings Official statistics show that there hundreds of thousands of sex workers in India, and many of them are below 18. Being a sex worker is not a crime, but soliciting and living of the earnings of sex workers are clear crimes. That does not deter the ‘businessmen’ who run brothels and sex rackets. 270 girls/women go missing every day in India and most land up in the flesh trade. Only 1% of them ma...

Mukti Bhawan review, by Siraj Syed: Pulsating, Soulful, Lively tale, of Death Mukti is Hindi for release or detachment, and Bhawan is home or mansion. Don’t wait too long after Mukti Bhawan is released in the nearest mansion (cinema hall). And do yourself a favour: Don’t die till you have seen this film about death. A sublime blend of realism and metaphor, Mukti Bhawan is ostensibly the tale of an old man who wants to move to the ‘dying quarters’ in the city of Banara...

Parched, Review by Siraj Syed: Rani & Lajjo & Bijli & Thelma & Louise’s Rihaee Get this right. Parched is not a remake. It is a nod to the soul of the 1988 film, Rihaee (Liberation, directed by Aruna Rajé), and a tribute to one of the most discussed climaxes in cinematic history: Hollywood’s Thelma and Louise, a 1991 milestone by Ridley Scott. One film old director Leena Yadav sets her tale in Rajasthan, enlists a youngish cast and a predominantly foreign cr...

Main Aur Charles, Review: Misanthropic biopic In the biography, The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj, by Richard Neville and Julie Clark, the serial killer’s mother summed him up. “He has the face of an angel, but somewhere, I think the devil crept into his soul,” she said. Main Aur Charles is the heavily edited, partly fictionalised but deeply rooted biopic about one of the most enigmatic criminal masterminds in 20th century history, wanted in India, Thailand, France, Gre...