Waheeda Rehman Wins India’s Highest Film Honor

Naman Ramachandran Hansal Mehta‘s “The Buckingham Murders,” which premieres at the BFI London Film Festival, will be the first in a franchise. Written by Aseem Arrora, Raghav Raj Kakker and Kashyap Kapoor, the film follows Jasmeet Bhamra (portrayed by Kareena Kapoor Khan), a detective and mother who, after losing her own child, must investigate the murder of a 10-year-old in Buckinghamshire, going down a rabbit hole of secrets, where almost everyone in the small town becomes a suspect.

The Wrestler, directed by Bangladeshi-Canadian filmmaker Iqbal H. Chowdhury, and September 1923, from Japan’s Tatsuya Mori, picked up the New Currents Awards as Busan International Film Festival wrapped a busy 28th edition on October 13. 

Naman Ramachandran Top Indian actor and emerging producer Taapsee Pannu is on a tear with a welter of projects lined up. Pannu debuted as a producer with horror-thriller “Blurr” (2022) that she co-produced via her Outsiders Films. The company’s next, “Dhak Dhak,” which follows four women who set out for a road trip to the highest motorable pass in the world on a motorbike journey of self-discovery, went on theatrical release on Oct.

The co-heads of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival, which was rescheduled at the eleventh hour this week due to the Israel-Gaza crisis, have vowed that the event will go ahead in some shape or form.

Ellise Shafer Legendary Hungarian director Béla Tarr will receive the Honorary Award from of the Academy President and Board at the European Film Awards on Dec. 9. “With this award the European Film Academy wishes to pay special tribute to an outstanding director and a personality with a strong political voice, who is not only deeply respected by his colleagues but also celebrated by audiences worldwide,” the Academy said in a press release.

Monsoon Wedding and A Suitable Boy filmmaker Mira Nair has been announced as the Head of Jury for the South Asia Competition at this year’s Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (October 27-November 5). 

Naman Ramachandran Devashish Makhija’s survival thriller “Joram,” which is playing at the Busan International Film Festival, will be released theatrically worldwide by Zee Studios in December. The film, which premiered at Rotterdam earlier this year, is in Busan’s A Window on Asian Cinema strand. Eminent actor Manoj Bajpayee, who previously starred in Makhija’s 2016 short “Taandav” and played the title role in “Bhonsle,” plays Dasru, a tribal migrant worker in Mumbai whose past catches up with him and he must flee with his infant daughter Joram.

EXCLUSIVE: Anand Ramayya’s Karma Film is set to produce Maya Bastian’s The Devil’s Tears alongside Canada’s Blackout Media, while Shant Joshi’s Fae Pictures has also come on board to executive produce. 

Naman Ramachandran After a three-year hiatus, the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival is returning with a larger lineup and an expanded focus on South Asian cinema. The festival will feature 250 films including 40 world premieres, 45 Asia premieres and 70 South Asia Premieres.

Mumbai Film Festival has announced a packed line-up of 250 films, including the 14 titles selected for its inaugural South Asia Competition, part of an expansion of the festival’s vision to become a hub for works from South Asia and South Asian diaspora talent. 

Dear Jassi arrives with echoes of Madonna’s 1989 hit “Dear Jessie” and its sugary promise of pink elephants and lemonade, but none of that turns out to be forthcoming in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s beautiful and brutal sixth feature. Instead, we have perhaps the most disturbing bait-and-switch since George Sluizer’s original iteration of The Vanishing, a Punjabi Juliet-meets-Romeo story that’s much harsher that any so-far-filmed version of West Side Story and a whole lot funnier. This dissonance takes a while to reveal itself, but when it does, the shock is visceral. The fact that almost everything is true is the killer blow, and the shockwave of that reverberates through the poignant final credits, a static shot that forces the audience, or maybe just simply dares them, to think about what they’ve just seen.  

Naman Ramachandran India’s Crawling Angel Films and Singapore’s Akanga Film Asia are teaming on Busan Asian Film School (AFiS) alumnus Aakash Chhabra’s feature directorial debut “I′ll Smile in September.” The film is selected at the Busan International Film Festival‘s Asian Project Market. Akanga’s credits include Cannes winner “Tiger Stripes,” Locarno winner “A Land Imagined” and its “Oasis of Now” is in competition in the festival’s New Currents strand.

Marta Balaga “Hesitation Wound” and “Hollywoodgate” were named winners at the Zurich Film Festival, as the 19th edition of the Swiss festival came to a close. Selman Nacar’s drama “Hesitation Wound” impressed the Feature Film Competition jury.

Naman Ramachandran Shah Rukh Khan has beaten Shah Rukh Khan at the box office. The Bollywood star’s “Jawan” has sped past his own “Pathaan” to occupy the box office top spot among the Indian films of 2023. “Jawan,” featuring Khan in a dual role as a father and son who set out to rectify corruption in Indian society, opened on Sept.

The San Sebastian Film Festival awarded O Corno (The Rye Horn) with the Golden Shell for Best Film. San Sebastián native Jaione Camborda took the top prize of the night for the feature she directed.

EXCLUSIVE: The London Indian Film Festival is expanding. 

India has selected the survival thriller 2018 from filmmaker Jude Anthany Joseph as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2024 Oscars.

Naman Ramachandran India’s Yash Raj Films has unveiled the first footage from “Tiger 3,” starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif. Directed by Maneesh Sharma (“Band Baaja Baaraat”), the film is the latest instalment in producer Aditya Chopra’s spy universe. The spy universe kicked off with the Tiger franchise, starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, beginning with “Ek Tha Tiger” (2012) and “Tiger Zinda Hai” (2017) and continued with “War” (2019), starring Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff.

Bodhi Tree Systems co-founder and former Disney APAC chief Uday Shankar outlined how his new venture – along with Reliance’s JioCinema – are building an alternative to legacy media in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets, on the first day of Media Partners Asia’s APOS conference in Bali, Indonesia. 

Stop Making Sense, the remastered concert film that sowed delight at TIFF, opens on 300 Imax screens in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Ireland. Locations Stateside number 260 ahead of a nationwide release next week.