Genre: Comedy, Drama
Actor: Anant Joshi, Anjum Batra, Naila Grewal, Nidhi Bisht, Ravi Kishan, Yashpal Sharma
Director: Rahul Pandey
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Actor: Anant Joshi, Anjum Batra, Naila Grewal, Nidhi Bisht, Ravi Kishan, Yashpal Sharma
Director: Rahul Pandey
Netflix India has been dominating the police procedural and mystery market, and Kohrra, its latest addition, is one of its better entries. Officer Balbir (Suvinder Vicky) is under pressure to resolve the case of a dead Non-Resident Indian and his missing white friend, but the fear of local backlash and global attention raises the stakes as the show weaves internal and external politics in India. Drugs, lies, and old grudges eventually surface, complicating the quiet pursuit of truth with public spectacle. This makes for a thrilling mystery, but Kohrra also excels as a family drama as we watch Balbir mend his relationship with his daughter, while his partner Garundi (Barun Sobti) deals with the pressure to get married.
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Barun Sobti, Ekavali Khanna, Harleen Sethi, Manish Chaudhary, Rachel Shelley, Sumit Gulati, Suvinder Vicky, Varun Badola, Zubin Mehta
Director: Randeep Jha
In this powerful exploration of suppressed desires and societal constraints, Fire delves deep into the lives of two women trapped in loveless marriages. Radha's husband has banished all desires from their marriage due to Radha's infertility, while the newlywed Sita knows her husband still sees his lover. As they live their stifling lives being dutiful wives and taking care of their paralyzed matriarch on their own, they begin to find solace in each other—eventually igniting a forbidden romance that challenges what they thought living truly was. The performances by Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi are captivating, as they find renewed passion in each other's arms even as they question how tradition doesn't hold a women's benefit in mind. Fire is a bold and groundbreaking film that provokes reflection on love, freedom, and the courage to defy societal norms.
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Alice Poon, Avijit Dutt, Javed Jaffrey, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Laurence Côte, Nandita Das, Ram Gopal Bajaj, Ranjit Chowdhry, Shabana Azmi, Vinay Pathak
Director: Deepa Mehta
Dhuin is evidently influenced by the Iranian filmmaker whose work its characters discuss: Abbas Kiarostami. Featuring non-professional actors and full of long observational takes that center everyday conversations in the life of an aspiring actor in a small Northern Indian city, it’s guided by the same social realist impulses that shaped Kiarostami’s work. What’s more, it even ends on an explicit reference to Close-Up.
But what elevates Dhuin above homage is the acute internal struggle it depicts. Set during COVID lockdown, the film follows Pankaj (Abhinav Jha) as he works on his acting in a bedroom adorned with images of Hollywood stars, chafing against the much less glamorous reality of the home he shares with his financially struggling parents. He's on the cusp of having enough money to fulfill his dream and move to Mumbai (where he hopes to advance his career), but several meetings with puffed-up filmmakers who are visiting from Mumbai give Pankaj a new perspective on the world he’s desperate to join. A testament to the torment of difficult choices, Dhuin also gently offers an alternative to the trope of abandoning home for the big city, suggesting that there might be greater beauty in the reality of where you’ve always been than the places you dream of.
Genre: Drama
Actor: Abhinav Jha, Prashant Rana
Director: Achal Mishra
COVID-19 raised concerns about sanitation and cleanliness, but in a society that just banned discrimination against “impure” castes seventy years ago, these concerns feel reminiscent of previous caste prejudice. Writer-director Anubhav Sinha presents this social inequity through Bheed, a black-and-white drama set in a fictional checkpoint as the lockdown restricted travel between different Indian states. As the people in the checkpoint wait for the updated government regulations, tensions rise between the officers and the travelers, as the stuck migrants worry about hunger, thirst, and infection. While it’s definitely a heavy film to watch, this film doesn’t exploit the pandemic as fodder for drama. Instead, Bheed realistically portrays how a crisis like COVID-19 exacerbates existing social inequity.
Genre: Drama
Actor: Aditya Srivastava, Ashutosh Rana, Bhumi Pednekar, Dia Mirza, Kritika Kamra, Omkar Das Manikpuri, Pankaj Kapur, Rajkummar Rao, Veerendra Saxena
Director: Anubhav Sinha
How far would you go to please the one you love? You might indulge your spouse with a white lie every now and then like the men in Swathi Shetty’s life each time she asks about her cooking, but Killer Soup takes it a whole step further when she asks Umesh to impersonate her similar-looking husband. And, as the lies pile up, and the cover-ups escalate, it’s delicious to see the lovers dig themselves into a deeper hole, even if they manage to throw off other people from the scent temporarily. While the story gets slightly convoluted later on due to many subplots, Killer Soup proves to at least be tastier than Swathi’s paya soup with its delightfully twisted lovers.
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Actor: Konkona Sen Sharma, Lal, Manoj Bajpayee, Nassar, Sayaji Shinde
Director: Abhishek Chaubey
Jaane Jaan is one of those thrillers where you hope that the main characters would get away with murder. Based on the 2005 Japanese novel, the Hindi adaptation still has the cat-and-mouse dynamic between the relentless detective and math genius protecting the suspect, along with their elaborate chess-like mind games. However, the film changes a major plot point from the novel, and without spoiling too much, it turns the math teacher, now named Naren, into a less sympathetic character. Given today’s sensibilities, it’s easy to understand why the change was made. After all, just because someone’s a genius, it doesn’t mean that they’re someone to be admired. Jaane Jaan still keeps up the exciting thrills and suspense of the original novel, but in making its changes, it becomes unclear who the film is rooting for.
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Actor: Jaideep Ahlawat, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Karma Takapa, Lin Laishram, Naisha Khanna, Saurabh Sachdeva, Suhita Thatte, Ujjwal Chopra, Vijay Varma
Director: Sujoy Ghosh
When your dad is single, and he isn’t in a relationship with someone else, naturally, a kid would wonder about their real biological mother. Hi Nanna is a take on this familiar tale, though Shouryuv’s directorial debut makes it feel brand new by telling the love story in a way a father would tell his daughter– mindful of the audience, so slightly embellished, but no less sweet. By doing so, it makes the viewers yearn for the lost love before raising our hopes and revealing the possibility of getting it back, especially with the natural chemistry of Nani and the striking Mrunal Thakur.
Genre: Drama, Family, Romance
Actor: Angad Bedi, Baby Kiara Khanna, Jayaram, Mrunal Thakur, Nani, Nassar, Neha Sharma, Priyadarshi Pullikonda, Shilpa Tulaskar, Shruti Haasan
Director: Shouryuv
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Ankith Madhav, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Kani Kusruti, Nimisha Sajayan, Ranjitha Menon, Roshan Mathew
Director: Richie Mehta
Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam might not immediately make sense to audiences new to director Lijo Jose Pellissery, but it’s still an interesting film that depicts Tamil culture. Also known as Like an Afternoon Dream, the contemplative bilingual film is centered around a prejudiced Malayali tour guide who wakes up as another man, specifically someone fluent in Tamil, and walks into the nearby village. Through vignettes focused on the village inhabitants, the film slowly unravels the dynamics between each of the villagers, flitting back to the tour bus on occasion to see how they’re faring. While some of the comedy goes over viewer’s heads, especially for people unfamiliar with the state, the slow-paced film feels like a fond memory from Pellissery. The film doesn’t explain anything at all, in the same way strange dreams refuse to do.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Actor: 'Poo' Ram, Ashokan, Ashwanth Ashokkumar, G. M. Kumar, Mammootty, Namo Narayanan, Rajesh Sharma, Ramachandran Durairaj, Ramya Pandian, Ramya Suvi, Thennavan
Director: Lijo Jose Pellissery
Sometimes the ability to create good drama (and comedy!) just depends on one's attentiveness to how the world works and how people would reasonably react to it. And this new Telugu-language series illustrates this perceptiveness and empathy to great effect. Kumari Srimathi tells a story free of unnecessary gimmicks and stylization, but still manages to make clashing cultural values and the struggle to make money compelling just through an attention to detail.
Right off the bat, there's so much that drives Siri, our title character: her love for her late grandfather, her frustration with her conservative but well-meaning family, and her outrage at all the assumptions people make about her as a single woman. All of this is channeled into her impulsive gamble to save their old ancestral home. But Siri, played by a tough and incredibly sympathetic Nithya Menen, isn't the only star of the show. Many times these family dramas are content with assigning stereotypes to secondary characters. And this show also admittedly does this, but there are significantly more of them who feel just as real as the protagonist—all attempting to negotiate for the things that matter most to them, all coming from an earnest place.
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Actor: Babu Mohan, Gautami Tadimalla, Madhavi Latha, Mahesh Achanta, Murali Mohan, Naresh, Nithya Menen, Praneeta Patnaik, Rameshwari Talluri, Thiruveer Reddy
Director: Gomtesh Upadhye
Young love, gunslinging, and the players of an opium ring open the first episode of the Indian comedy-crime-thriller, Guns & Gulaabs. The show alternates between scenes of serious crime, gruesome murder, love confessions, and comedic bits, which all blend surprisingly well. It also employs various quirks, including movie soundtrack references and fast-paced action scenes, that strengthen its 90s worldbuilding. And the multiple storylines quickly allude to each other in the first two episodes, allowing them all to progress without any lag. With its deft balance of crime and comedy, Guns & Gulaabs begins with a bang and a chuckle that's hard to turn away from.
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Actor: Adarsh Gourav, Dulquer Salmaan, Gulshan Devaiah, Rajkummar Rao, TJ Bhanu
Friday Night Plan resembles many a classic teen film (most notably, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Booksmart), but it also doubles as a thoughtful inquiry into the delicate bond between siblings who could not be more different from one another. Sid and his younger brother Adi (Amrith Jayan) have different ideas of what matters most in life, ideas that get tested when their mother’s car gets towed away during their night of fun. Sid thinks it’s only right to come clean and retrieve the car no matter what, but Adi believes this can all wait until tomorrow morning: tonight is Sid’s night to celebrate and finally connect with peers he’s shut off all his life. This tension comes as a surprise in what otherwise looks like an ordinary teen movie, but it’s also a welcome addition that helps Friday Night Plan stand out from the rest.
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Family
Actor: Aadhya Anand, Amrith Jayan, Babil Khan, Juhi Chawla, Juhi Chawla Mehta, Ninad Kamat
Director: Vatsal Neelakantan
Genre: Drama, Music
Actor: Anjum Batra, Anuraag Arora, Apindereep Singh, Diljit Dosanjh, Kumud Mishra, Mohit Chauhan, Nisha Bano, Parineeti Chopra, Sahiba Bali, Vipin Katyal
Director: Imtiaz Ali
Though it doesn't proceed like most animal/nature-centered documentaries that you've seen, the Oscar-nominated All That Breathes is instantly memorable in the way it de-centers the human perspective from its all-encompassing study of New Delhi, India. The wildlife rescue team that features prominently in this film still only becomes a vessel through which director Shaunak Sen explores the environmental and political hazards being faced by the nation today. It's a movie that definitely challenges you to think for yourself, as any talking heads or on-screen explanations are traded for truly stunning shots of New Delhi as a biome teeming with life among the dirt. For those who want their documentaries unconventional, this is excellent stuff.
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Director: Shaunak Sen