Chhava, Review: Vicky Kaushal has arrived, and how! A new word for many cine-goers, Chhava means a lion’s cub or an elephant’s young one. It was an epithet given to Chhatrapati Sambhaji, son of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, as the lion, and his son, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, as the cub, to symbolise his valour and legacy. It also means boss. A film, based on Sambhaji’s life, has just been released, with the title, Chhava. It comes as part of t...

Red carpet moment for the team on Berlinale 75 opening night! Photo by Laurent Hou Variety tagged "The light" fails to illuminate! The world premiere of Tom Tykwer’s latest feature film Das Licht (The Light) opened the 75th Berlin International Film Festival on February 13, 2025. The German-French production Das Licht (The Light) was presented as a Berlinale Special Gala in the Berlinale Palast, out of competition. Tala Al-Deen in Das Licht (The Light) by Tom Tyk...

SuperBoys of Malegaon, Trailer launch: The new Mollywood Utter the word Malegaon and a sleepy small town, in Nashik, 270 km from Mumbai, population 8,00,000, comes to mind. Some two decades ago, a bunch of Malegaonists, with no exposure to the art, dreamt about making their own film, inspired by big Hindustani films from Mumbai. Against all odds, they succeeded. Ideal subject for a documentary? Indeed! One was made, and widely acclaimed. Years later, three major film-making firms—Excel ...

Indigenous Cinema Alliance Marks 10-Year Milestone With Exciting New Projects and Partnerships as Part of the 2025 European Film Market   The Indigenous Cinema Alliance will celebrate 10 years of highlighting the best in global Indigenous film and television with an exciting line-up of films and events sure to elevate and celebrate work on a major international level as part of the 2025 European Film Market and the Berlinale.    Founded in ...

The yearly WCF Day at the Berlinale is the World Cinema Fund’s (WCF) public think-tank. The 2025 WCF Day programme offers the opportunity to address key artistic and cultural policy issues in the WCF’s work. These include the need to further develop structural measures in the WCF regions, which is connected to the visibility of WCF as well as other films. It is about a further professionalisation of the industry, whi...

  Calling entries for FIPRESCI Grand Prix for the best film of 2024, 70 minutes and more  FIPRESCI extends this invitation to you to film-makers to submit films (70 minutes and above) for the annual FIPRESCI India Grand Prix Award for the year 2024. About the Award: The Grand Prix Award, instituted by FIPRESCI-India (the India chapter of the International Federation of Film Critics: FIPRESCI) seeks to celebrate and recognize outstanding achievements in fiction and non-fiction f...

Link to SPIRITUAL DESTINY:     https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DVSWRXH8   In Spiritual Destiny, the first book in the Alp to Taw Chronicles and Destiny Trilogy, meet Joseph Arthur Golden-Eagle, known as JAG, a full-blooded Pequot Native American who believes he possesses the vision to guide humanity through a pivotal crossroads. Raised by Night Owl and Morning Dove in Stonington, Connecticut, JAG has inherited his ancestors’ guiding values: DON’T TAKE what is not yo...

LoveYaPa, Review: The mobile phone as Pandora’s Box Those who are uninitiated might not realise that the title is a variation of siyapa, which means chaos or jiggery-pokery, and that siyapa itself comes from the Urdu word, siyah, meaning black, or dark. Siyapa has been used in the title of a film some years ago. So the makers of LoveYaPa have come up with this three-word composite term, standing for Love Ya and Pa. Translate these three words, and you get Love Or Pa (father). Clever, ve...

QUWA' screening at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2025, a film by Jade Ipina (co-producer), Jonathan Coronado (sound designer), Ryan C.Grant (director of photography and co-editor)  and Catherine Scanlon (co-producer and assistant camera/editor). Interview by Emmanuel Itier I was truly taken by surprise by  Quwa’, a short film, exploring the history of the Goleta Slough and the historical Chumash island Quwa who was once there. I leave nearby and I drive by the area ...

  The Burbank Music Center officially opened its doors on Sunday, February 2nd. The event welcomed musicians, creatives, parents of students, and community ers.    Hosted by TV personality and PR expert Louisa Sharamatyan, the celebration featured notable guests, including Burbank Mayor Nikki Perez, Council Member Konstantine Anthony, Dr. Armond Aghakhanian, President of the Burbank Un...

  40 Years of SBIFF 2025 OPENING NIGHT: on a rainy night, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) opened its 40th edition with the U.S. premiere of “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,”, offering a much-needed respite after a challenging month marked by devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. Starting on February 4, the festival features 33 world premieres from 60 countries, with over half directed by women. Notable stars expected to attend this milestone celebration in...

Srilankan film The Other Half, Review: Death, despair and despondency In the opening titles, the carries a long message about Srilankans dying of kidney failure, caused by the wide use of contaminated or sub-standard fertilisers and pesticides. As many as 50,000 of them have lost their lives due to such poisoning, and continue to die, making it a tragedy equal to, or perhaps even greater than the Civil War that ravaged the island state in recent decades. This makes you wonder whether a docume...

Deva, Overview: Different, not distinguished It is different. Though the central character is an Assistant Commissioner of Police (A), and a tough nut at that, the film has a modest littering of corpses and a very few incredible, blood-letting or torture sequences. Based on these very qualities, Deva, which is almost poles apart from the spate of current films that are contrary to this approach, should be welcomed. Moreover, it stars Shahid Kapoor, who is yet to be labelled a hit man, most ...

Ilu Ilu 1998, Review: Too many luse ends A good 38 years ago, in a Hindustani hit film titled Saudagar, lyricist Anand Bakhshi coined a sensible nonsensical term in one of its songs, which began with Ilu Ilu, the three letters of the alphabets, standing for I Love U. It was a runaway hit. The song lived in the memory of a unit of Marathi film-makers, who might have been just born then or in their early childhood. Cut to 2025. A Phalke family (any possible connection with the father of Indian ...

Happy Doom © 2023 Billy Roisz 20 films from a total of 18 production countries are celebrating their premieres at the 2025 Berlinale Shorts, of which 15 are world premieres. The programme combines classic storytelling with surreal works, features various styles of animation and presents experimental documentary forms. The films show human beings and the circumstances in which they live. They examine the impact of the past on the present (Rückblickend Betrachtet (In Retrospect); Kok...

In the 2025 Berlinale Classics section, the artistic director of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Dr Rainer Rother, and his team showcase eight digitally restored film classics, seven world premieres and one international premiere. The eras represented range from the 1930s to the 1980s. For the first time, the section features restorations by the Estonian Film Institute (EFI) and the China Film Archive. Berlinale Classics also embraces genre cinema, a nod to the 2025 Retrospective. The section will ope...

As wildfires ravage the planet, a new National Film Board of Canada documentary offers extraordinary stories of survival and adaptation (Image provided by the NFB) Praise to directing partners Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper who are giving a US premiere, at The Santa Barbara International Film Festival, of their very timely documentary: ‘Incandescence’. Be ready to truly feel the heat while watching this mesmerizing and very scary "anatomy of fire”. Nova and Velcro...

  An interview with Star: Ali Gallo    Meet rising Star, Ali Gallo! You might have catch her in ‘Incoming’ or ‘The Sex lives of college girls.’ Ali is the leading actress of the  new dark comedy ‘I hate myself and want to die’ directed by the very talented J.Davis who had directed a little gem: ‘Manson Family Vacation’. Ali Gallo is the young ‘Hayley’ who, with other friends and family , ar...

Train Dreams Star Joel Edgerton on Red Carpet Premiere at SFF 2025 ROSE WAGNER THEATER in Salt Lake City,  Utah   Watch the trailer!   ...

SkyForce, Review: May the Force be with you That is more like it. When you are making a film about war and real wartime heroes, stick to the basics and let jingoism take a back seat. We have had more than our fair share of war movies, with Indo-Pak conflicts dominating the screen. Many have set their tales in British India, going back up to 200 years. Yet others have flashed back a good 1,000 years, to reawaken the history of Muslim/Mughal rule over our country. SkyForce narrates the story of...

Eaten by the Sea -  a james W. Hawk music film and Winter Shadows on New Snow and Wind in the Old Oak Tree - a James W. Hawk experimental time-lapse film were quarter-finalists at the WideScreen Film & Music Video Festival in Toronto, Canada. ...

 In its 20th edition, Forum Expanded brings together 24 works from 21 countries. Employing practices that span installation, film, video and sculpture, the selected artists and filmmakers employ translucence as a means of engaging with the cataclysmic realities of the present. Whether dealing with personal or collective histories, ongoing wars, extractivism, legacies of colonialism or social inequalities, their approaches frequently hinge on intervention rather than observation. B...

35 film projects from 27 countries have been selected for the 22nd Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 15-19). Their producers will meet potential co-producers and financiers at the event, which this year will take place primarily at the Octogon, a new event location at Leipziger Platz, in order to realise the feature films as international co-productions in the coming years. Women are directing 19 of the 35 projects. There were 351 submissions for the official project selection, ...

  AMC+ is thrilled to partner with the Sundance Institute again to celebrate independent filmmaking at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. AMC+ will spotlight the power of Indigenous stories with The Intersection of Indigenous Documentary & Narrative Storytelling, a dynamic on Saturday, January 25, at 1:30 p.m. in the Filmmaker Lodge.   This discussion will dive into how reality-based filmmaking transitions into captivating fictional narratives. ...

Animated shorts of all kind and techniques are eligible for Fantoche’s 2025 competitions if they’ve been completed after 31 December 2023 and last no longer than 40 minutes. Submission is free of charge and will close on 11 May 2025. You can submit via FilmFreeway:  https://filmfreeway.com/Fantoche The international show of animation film has become one of the world’s most prominent animation festivals and is the largest cultural event in Switzerland that is devoted exclu...