Mumbai can be repulsive yet beguiling, inviting all to enter its porous skin and become an implant in the body,” writes Priya Sarukkai Chabria.

It may sound somewhat childlike and gushing, but I have to admit that my first visit to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival had me racing back to my childhood days when fairytale books enchanted you with illustrations of castles and woods, streams and flowers, kings and humble folk.

Rs 350

Begum Hazrat Mahal’s life was in every sense extraordinary. Fully aware that historical fiction must mirror the times in which the story is located, Kenize Mourad has woven a tale of love into the matrix of history.

It feels much bigger than it is. Into its sixth edition, the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF) screened 81 features and 84 shorts from 48 countries.

The film festival in Almaty (Septe-mber 17-21), Kazakhstan, is called the Eurasia International Film Festival, and with good reason.

By Sharayu Phalke Summanwar

Rs 2,012

His mother told him that he was born with wide open eyes, golden brown and filled with curiosity and wonder, and that is why they called him Dhundiraj, the discoverer! The moniker Dadasaheb came much later.” Thus begins The Silent Film: Dadasaheb Phalke 1870-1944, the first book in English (one biography was penned by Bapu Vatave in Marathi and later translated into Engl-ish; another was by Bham-bre) to capture the inside story of the Father of Indi-an Cinema, of his personal and family life, his roller coaster career, his heartbreaks and exultations, his plenty and penury, of Dadasaheb Phalke — forgotten as he lay dying.

Who knows of Iranian filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui in India?

Renowned Iranian director-screenwriter and a passionate feminist, Tahmineh Milani, is every inch a fighter for women’s rights in a country wary of them.

Legendary filmmaker Orson Welles once famously remarked: “In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Rena

Films based on the lives of artistes — painters, writers, musicians etc — have a habit of turning into romantic portrayals: lonely and intense, these uniquely gifted men and women who are shown as tor