The power of Santosh hinges on the script, enhanced by Shahana Goswami and Sunita Rajwar's performances, observes Deepa Gahlot.
Few people have left the kind of imprint on India's advertising canvas as Piyush Pandey. An observer who seemed to know what made the country tick, a man who could find humour in life's everyday struggles and spin magic from it, one who understood that to reach the masses you needed to communicate with them in their language and context -- he was all of this and more.
Which of the 28 films in contention gets your vote?
'They are clueless about the man on the currency notes.' 'They have been fed with WhatsApp forwards, so either Gandhi is vilified or deified. There's nothing in between.'
Rishab Shetty's Kantara Chapter 1 is an ambitious, bold update of the ideas of the first film in a much bigger canvas, discovers Arjun Menon.
'The LTTE were the pioneers of that.'
'His understanding of human nature and emotions can never be matched by me.'
'Sholay had a sargam of human emotions.'
Every summer, Sudhir Gautam makes a pilgrimage to Sachin Tendulkar's Mumbai home, carrying a box of Muzaffarpur litchis from his home town in Bihar, a gesture sweeter than the fruit itself.
On August 5, 1953, Jawaharlal Nehru sent a strange note to the foreign secretary. It is worth mentioning because it was symptomatic of the lack of knowledge about Western Tibet in India and in South Block in particular, notes Claude Arpi.
'I am still trying to understand the gravity of what's being done.' 'How can someone else decide how to conclude my film?'
'Whenever people say to me that all my work looks unique, I say to them originality is the art of concealing your source.' 'You can't see the sources that I take from because usually, they are Indian.' 'But then Indians don't find my work Indian.'
How wonderful it would be for all of us to watch the Oscar ceremony on March 2, 2025 and watch AWIAL win an Oscar, notes Aseem Chhabra.
'On our first day at the Kumbh Mela, there was a fire and shook our confidence. 'There must have been a few crore people there.' 'How do we place the camera in between them?'
'There is a grace to the way she goes about her work: Focused, open to ideas, and willing to take creative risks.'
'It is for the first time that a film of mine will be released in theatres and Indian audiences will finally be able to buy tickets and experience it on a big screen, where cinema truly comes to life.'
'On this happy occasion, I wish Sonam more work and another National Award.'
All We Imagine as Light has been on several critics' best of the year lists, including Sight and Sound (Payal Kapadia appeared on the magazine's cover, perhaps a first for an Indian filmmaker), to The New York Times, Time and it is the number one film recommended by Barack Obama. The future certainly belongs to Payal Kapadia, asserts Aseem Chhabra.
'I am not a mother and never had an abortion either, so I had to understand motherhood and child loss from anecdotal experiences of others.'
'In Mumbai, isolation is a very different isolation.' 'It's not about actual physical loneliness.' 'It's the loneliness in the company of others, and I felt that that is a very Mumbai thing.' 'You can be travelling in the ladies compartment squashed against everybody's armpits and still be really, really sad and alone.'
'I thought of a suppressed country and a free world.' 'If we travel from one to another, what will that road look like?' 'What colours, music there will be? What kind of people would you see?'
More screens, more films, and longer windows will convert to more people watching, assuming they know a film is releasing, points out Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
The iconic editor who reshaped fashion, has transcended her role as editor and become a pop culture icon, famously immortalised in the movie, The Devil Wears Prada.
The closing ceremony of the 55th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) saw a lot of glamour, as stars headed to the Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Indoor Stadium in Goa and made it a night to remember.
There is nothing, when it comes to clothes, that Sonam cannot wear well. Nor are there fashion rules that she won't break if need be.
It's a proud moment for India.
From gorgeous gowns to sleek suits, the stars at Cannes showed us Indian-designed outfits that were a unique expression of style and artistry.
Her acclaimed film All We Imagine As Light received two Golden Globe nominations in the Best Director (Motion Picture) and Best Motion Picture (Non English Language Film) categories. This marks the first time an Indian director has been nominated in the Director category.
'I wasn't just racing, I was paving the way for others.'
'Everyone at Guru Dutt Productions would get monthly salaries. Waheeda didi would get Rs 2,500 per month. And that was the reason why she left.'
'You have become a big star. How can you play a secondary role to Meena Kumari?'
'People worship Krishna. People don't worship Ved Vyas, who wrote the Mahabharata.' 'It's a cultural thing because we don't see the heroes behind the screen, we see the heroes who are in front of the screen.'
'I promise you, you've never seen her do anything like this.' 'It is a complete reinvention of Janhvi Kapoor.'
International stars are increasingly turning to Indian designers to make a statement at international events.
Like the dinosaurs, vultures face extinction. From 40 million 33 years ago, only 35,000 to 45,000 vultures remain in India.
'That's how big this taboo is.' 'It would be difficult for them to understand what I am trying to show with Jaggi.'
'Thank you to the Cannes Film Festival for having our film here. Please don't wait 30 years to have another Indian film.'
Arjun Menon looks at some Tamil films from the last decade that tick all the right boxes, and lists where you can watch them.
The four-day CIFF was packed with so many other new projects, like Radhika Apte's first directorial effort Koyta, with Vikramaditya Motwane as the producer, Venkatesh Maha's Ko Ko Ko, Jeo Baby's Punishment and Shonali Bose's Black Mountain Monpa.
The Malayalam film 2018: Everyone is a Hero, India's official entry in the International Feature Film category at the 2024 Academy Awards, is out of the Oscars race.
