Mandela, the Tamil political satire starring Yogi Babu and Nayattu, the Malayalam political thriller starring actors Kunchako Boban, Joju George and Nimisha Sajayan, are among the 14 films that are shortlisted for India’s entry to the 2022 Oscars, The Cue reported.
Mandela, the Tamil political satire directorial debut of Madonne Ashwin which earned positive reviews, first took form as a seven-minute short film called Ward Enn 325 in 2011 when he participated in the third season of reality show Naalaya Iyakunar, the filmmaker told Silverscreen India.
By treating the only adult representative of the lowest strata of the village as a nincompoop, Ashwin does a great disservice to the film’s essential message.When the village’s only outlier (Yogi Babu), a Dalit barber living under a banyan tree, gets a new name and a voter ID, he becomes the village’s crucial swing voter.
Starring : Yogi Babu, Sangili Murugan, G.M. Sundar, Sheela Rajkumar, Kanna Ravi & others. Written & Directed by Madonne Ashwin Produced by S. Sashikanth Co-Produced by Chakravarthy Ramachandra Creative Producer – Balaji Mohan DOP – Vidhu Ayyanna Music – Bharath Sankar Editor – Philomin Raj Art Director – Ramu Thangaraj Costume Design – Dinesh Manoharan […]
Starring : Yogi Babu, Sangili Murugan, G.M. Sundar, Sheela Rajkumar, Kanna Ravi & others. Written & Directed by Madonne Ashwin Produced by S. Sashikanth Co-Produced by Chakravarthy Ramachandra Creative Producer – Balaji Mohan DOP – Vidhu Ayyanna Music – Bharath Sankar Editor – Philomin Raj Art Director – Ramu Thangaraj Costume Design – Dinesh Manoharan […]
Periyandavar, the upcoming Tamil film starring comedian Yogi Babu, is set to have elements of fantasy, time-travel, and period drama, director-producer R Kannan tells Silverscreen India.
From Ranjith’s own Tamil films to the Hindi film Article 15, based on 2014 Badaun gang-rape allegations and 2016 Una flogging, several movies have highlighted caste oppression and portrayed the lives of people from marginalised communities.The film follows the life of a young girl Yosana (Ajmina Kassim) from the Puthirai Vannaar caste, and tells the tale of how she becomes immortalised as the local deity Maadathy after a traumatic incident.
An eighth-grader who rose to power by corrupt means, Choudhury gets indicted in a long-running legal case over a scam and is sent to central jail at the beginning of the film.To latch on to power, Choudhury appoints his wife, Bimla Devi (Nimrat Kaur), a rube whose world revolves around cattle-rearing and the kitchen, as interim chief minister.
Loosely based on the life of Veerapandiya Kattabomman, the 18th century Tamil Nadu chieftain of Panchalankuruchi, veteran actor Sivaji Ganesan takes on the titular role in this 1959 Tamil biographical drama film.Co-produced by India and the UK, Gandhi is a 1982 period film based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, a key figure of the Indian Independence struggle, who headed the non-violent movement against colonial rule.
Thalaikoothal, the upcoming Tamil film starring actors Kathir and Samuthirakani, commenced production recently. Its director Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan calls it a rural drama revolving around the titular euthanasia ritual, which also has a fantasy element to it.
Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize-winner and South African anti-apartheid and human rights activist, died on Sunday, after prolonged illness, according to a Reuters report. He was 90.
Starring Satya Dev, Nithya Menen and Rahul Ramakrishna, it is a period comedy-drama set in a village in Telangana against the backdrop of the Skylab incident. Silverscreen India’s Sankeertana called the film “well-made” in her review and added that it “celebrates stories, big and small. ” On the filmmaker’s writing, she said, “The way Vishwak writes his characters reminded me of Jhandyala; how most of his characters are caricatures, yet fully-realised human beings.
Silverscreen India termed this hour-long film “short in length, long in depth. ” Starring actor Vijay Sethupathi, his daughter Sreeja Vijay Sethupathi and actor Regina Cassandra, it is helmed by debutant filmmaker Karthik S and revolves around a family and the dog that they adopt.In an earlier conversation with Silverscreen India, Ashwin said that the film first took form as a seven-minute short called Ward Enn 325 in 2011 before he decided to explore it further as a feature. “Films don’t create revolution, but they are thought-inducing,” the filmmaker added.
Actor Yogi Babu has commenced shooting for an upcoming Tamil film with Malayalam director Rejishh Midhila. The yet-to-titled project is produced by the director himself in association with Lijo James under The Great Indian Cinemas banner.
Tamil film Koozhangal (Pebbles) directed by Vinothraj PS, is India’s official entry to the 2022 Oscars.
If Koozhangal finds a place on the nomination list, it will represent India in the Best International Feature Film category at the Academy Awards next year.
A 15-member panel of the Film Federation of India, headed by filmmaker Shaji N Karun as the chairman of the jury, selected Koozhangal from among 14 shortlisted films. Mandela, Nayattu, Sherni and Sardar Udham were among the other films in the shortlist.
Produced by Nayanthara and Vignesh Shivan under the Rowdy Pictures banner, Koozhangal, is directed by debutant Vinothraj, a Madurai-based filmmaker.
Making the announcement, Vignesh Shivan tweeted on Saturday “There’s a chance to hear this! “And the Oscars goes to …. “ Two steps away from a dream come true moment in our lives.”
As per the official synopsis of the film, in Koozhangal, “An alcoholic wife beater embarks on a journey, dragging his young son along to fetch back his wife whom he had chased away.”
Silverscreen India’s review of the film called it “part of a new wave happening on the peripheries of Tamil cinema where young filmmakers with little or no experience in filmmaking are coming up with stunning experiments in cinema.”
In February this year, Koozhangal also became the first Tamil film to win the prestigious Tiger Award at the 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
Speaking to Silverscreen India after the win, Vinothraj said “Everyone who had watched the film at the festival had liked it. We knew we were going to win something.”
“Film festivals are important. But I want the film to be seen by my people. It is about them, for them,” he added.
The Academy Awards are scheduled to be held in March, 2022. Other films selected to represent India at the Oscars in the past include Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Jallikattu and Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy. Both films failed to find a place on the nomination list. In the 2021 Academy Awards, Danish film Another Round won in the Best International Feature Film category.
Vijay Sethupathy, interestingly, began his film career in movies like Soodhu Kavvum, Naduvula Koncham Pakkatha Kaanom, and Kadavul Irukkaan Kumar, made on a small budget by first-time filmmakers who brought to the industry the spirit of the digital era.The sequence where Singaravelan undergoes a change of heart comes across as a set-up clumsily inserted into the narrative; A lazy solution to a complex problem.
“There is no genre called horror in Tamil cinema,” says film historian Theodore Bhaskaran.
Loki, the Disney+ and Marvel web series starring Tom Hiddleston, which concluded its first season on Wednesday, featured the Hindi song Swag Saha Nahi Jaye from the 2018 film Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi in its finale.
But where Vellai Yaanai rises above scripts that discuss similar themes is when it presents Yogi Babu who delivers a contrarian perspective with characteristic disregard – not on the cause or plight of his fellow villagers, but on survival itself.Place him in a romantic parody with Nayanthara, as a political pawn in the squalor of Mandela, or in the role in Vellai Yaanai which relies on him to magic away its heavy themes, Babu seems to know them all intimately. He knows what to do.
Released six days before voting in Tamil Nadu began, the film stars an ensemble cast including the likes of Yogi Babu, Sheela Rajkumar and Shangli Murugan. In an interview with Firstpost, Yogi Babu who plays the lead says, “I thought, if this fellow (Pradeep Ranganathan, who directed Comali) who knows me so well, and who has directed me, can cry, then probably I am not that bad with emotion. “Although some rogues get elected to parliament, we will not allow gangster tactics in the election,” says Sanjay Mishra, who plays an officer of the Election Commission of India, in Newton.
Incidentally, the two Icelandic films making rounds at film festivals in India this year – And Breathe Normally and Woman At War – are about the common women force of the ‘most gender equal’ nation in the world. The latter, directed by Benedikt Erlingsson, was Iceland’s official entry to the Oscar race.
The official list of movies that have been selected for this year’s Cannes International Film Festival are out and Manto, written and directed by Nandita Das, the only film selected from India will be screened under the Un Certain Regard category of the festival.
This film explores the bittersweet love story of the celebrated physicist and Nobel laureate Stephen Hawking and his former wife Jane Hawking.An unconventional biopic of the very uncoventional Bob Dylan, the film cast a string of popular actors (Christian Bale, the late Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett among others) to bring about the many facets of the singer-song writer.