World Cinema

Bollywood learns to go slow with body shaming

On the global stage, Chris Rock’s unkind jibe at Jada Pinkett Smith during the Oscars shows the world of showbiz is yet to get over its tendency of shaming

Dear Uncle Oscar, You Forgot Lata Mangeshkar

Subhash K Jha feels sorry for the Oscars. If they forgot to mention Lata Mangeshkar in their 'In Memoriam' section then it just shows how ignorant the Academy awards are about world cinema.

Petite Maman movie review: Céline Sciamma masterfully explores themes of grief and loss

One could argue that the elements in Céline Sciamma's new film — pain, grief and loss — are very much present in her previous four feature films.

At Visions du Réel 2021, two films explore the intersection between images and war with great cogency and rigour

Directed by Massimo D'Anolfi and Martina Parenti, the Italian feature War and Peace and Bellum — The Daemon of War, made by David Herdies and Georg Götmark, illuminate the profound, multi-layered links between war, photography and cinema.

MUBI India's Svetlana Naudiyal on how the curated service is making its mark amid sea of streaming platforms

MUBI India's director of content Svetlana Naudiyal on bringing world cinema to Indian audiences, providing a platform to smaller Indian films, and why the streaming service operates in collaboration with movie theatres.

Werner Herzog’s Family Romance LLC, the defining film of our times, captures malaise at the heart of capitalism

Werner Herzog's Family Romance LLC is a film that challenges the convention of both fiction and documentary filmmaking.

In Reaching for the Sun, William Wellman explores modern man’s enslavement by his own inventions

Adapted from Wessel Smitter’s novel F.O.B. Detroit, Reaching for the Sun follows Russ, a backwoods clam-digger who moves to Detroit to work in a car factory so he can afford an outboard motor for his boat.

A murder mystery, a society on the brink: Death in Buenos Aires is Natalia Meta's commentary on '80s Argentina

Death In Buenos Aires opens with the face of a beautiful young man sitting at the edge of a luxurious bed. Just behind him, soaked in blood, yet peacefully dead, is a man of Argentinian high society.

In Heroes for Sale, William A Wellman presents discontentment with the old and hope for the new, steeped in govt propaganda

Heroes for Sale was made just after Roosevelt swore in as the 32nd president of the United States. As though symptomatic of this particular time, the film embodies both a discontentment with the preceding Hoover administration and a hope for the new one, the duality manifesting as an incongruity between plot and character.

How The Scarlet Empress deftly explores the duality of evil and innocence while mapping the rise of Catherine the Great

Nothing, not even Josef von Sternberg’s earlier films with Marlene Dietrich, anticipates the stylistic aggression of The Scarlet Empress, a box-office bomb.