Indian HAF Project ‘White Snow’ Aims to be ‘Artistic Revolt’ Against Repressive Political Systems (EXCLUSIVE)

Inspectors ordered a restaurant to close after finding it infested with mice and filthy kitchen equipment being used.

Singles, get excited! A new matchmaking show is on the way.

Sophia Scorziello editor “Indian Matchmaking” Season 3 will premiere April 21 on Netflix, the streamer announced Tuesday. Mumbai’s matchmaker Sima Taparia returns to help single millennials around the world find love, employing decades-worth of experience and traditional methods. This season, Sima’s matchmaking touch will reach from New York to New Delhi, Miami to London, as well as clients both old and new.  “Indian Matchmaking” premiered its first season in July 2020. The show is executive produced by Aaron Saidman, Eli Holzman, Smriti Mundhra and J.C. Begley. Check out some first looks of season three below.  Also in today’s TV news:

One of Netflix’s most popular reality shows is gearing up for a third go-round and to mark the occasion the streamer is unveiling some first-look photos from the upcoming new season of “Indian Matchmaking”.

Many of us who are food lovers with a taste for Eastern cuisine have come to know what to expect from an Indian restaurant by now. Pakoras, popadoms, and Rogan Josh are usually staple dishes we can find on any menu, but one not-so-traditional desi restaurant in Manchester is choosing to do things a bit differently.

Naman Ramachandran Indian streamer SonyLIV has revealed a robust 35-strong series slate, including some returning hits, with a further expansion into South Indian languages in addition to its Hindi-language slate. Headquartered in Mumbai, the streamer now has three content offices in South India, in Kochi, Hyderabad and Chennai. SonyLIV also now has 24 million paid subscribers, SonyLIV head of content Saugata Mukherjee told Variety. In the Tamil language, after the success of “Tamil Rockerz” in 2022 and “The Story of Things” earlier this year, SonyLIV has saga “Journey,” headlined by R. Sarathkumar with Cheran Pandian (“Autograph”) serving as showrunner; and “The Madras Murder,” set against the backdrop of the Tamil film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, with A.L. Vijay (“Kireedam”) as showrunner.

Elena Rybakina is the champion!

Tom Hiddleston met his Night Manager counterpart Aditya Roy Kapur for the first time last night.

SonyLIV’s Rocket Boys, about Indian scientists Dr. Homi J. Bhabha and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, was one of the most popular and critically acclaimed web series in India last year, winning multiple awards for its performances, writing and direction. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Fly Me to the Moon,” a work-in-progress from Hong Kong, dominated the prizes presented at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum project market. It collected five awards and was invited to continue its journey at Cannes in May. Directed by first-time feature maker Sasha Chuk and produced by the veteran Stanley Kwan, the film tells the tale of a pair of sisters moving from Hunan to Hong Kong in the 1990s. They are faced with an identity crisis, poverty and their father’s drug addiction. It entered the market with $640,000 of its intended $705,000 production budget in place, and more than filled the gap with the prizes announced on Wednesday.

Naman Ramachandran Iran’s Arsalan Amiri, who won two awards at Venice for his debut feature “Zalava,” is back at the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) with his new project, “Janava.” “Zalava,” which was at HAF in 2019, also played at the Toronto, Rotterdam and the Goteborg festivals, among many others. The Farsi-language “Janava” will follow four treasure hunters who embark on a journey to find a lost treasure. Their lives are in danger when they realize a djinn (or genie) is among them and wants to claim the treasure for itself. “My previous film, ‘Zalava,’ focused on the dangerous beliefs of the masses. My second film, ‘Janava,’ focuses on the individual beliefs of characters and how they defy societal norms,” Amiri says. “Belief is my favorite theme to work with. I have faced the good and bad effects of belief in my life — but when these beliefs are warped or taken to extremes by the individual or in politics, it causes the destruction of human societies. My experience living in the Middle East and studying history proves the importance of people’s beliefs. Well, I would also like to make an interesting and entertaining film of course, and this film genre would help to make the concept interesting.”

Naman Ramachandran Nepal’s “Bhunte” marks the feature debut of Bikas Neupane, who previously directed two acclaimed shorts. The project has been selected for the 21st Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), the project market that operates concurrently with FilMart (March 13-16). The film will follow 12-year-old Bhunte, who lives with his poor father and mother in a small village called Khahare, located in Nepal’s western plains. He has an obsession with soccer, despite his asthma-stricken father’s objection. One day at school, Bhunte vows to buy a soccer ball of his own when his classmates don’t let him play with them.

Naman Ramachandran Taiwan-France film “Salli” marks the feature debut of Taipei-based filmmaker Lien Chien-Hung after several acclaimed shorts and a TV movie. “Salli,” which won the grand prize at the Chinese-language film project matching and co-production platform Golden Horse Film Project Promotion in 2019, is a work-in-progress selection at the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF). The Mandarin-, Taiwanese-, English- and French-language film follows a lonely middle-aged chicken farmer Hui-Chun, who doesn’t speak English and develops a romantic relationship through an app with a French man who calls himself Martin. In the online world, Hui-Chun is Salli. Despite everyone calling it a romance scam, she wants to prove that love indeed exists.

In Love and Warcraft, Madhuri Shekar was heralded as one of today’s fastest-rising and most prolific American playwrights.Since that 2014 debut and its focus on video games and gamer culture, Shekar has also earned praise for her mastery at tackling intricate and distinct genres, as varied as science and science fiction, and historical drama and horror.Shekar is at it again, this time with a contemporary American dramedy, or what Olney Theatre characterizes as “firmly in the mold of the great American kitchen sink dramas, leavened by a good dose of comedy.”A Nice Indian Boy is a story about Naveen Gavaskar, a Marathi-speaking Hindu boy, meeting the boy of his dreams — another Hindu boy, Keshav, who loves the same Bollywood films and can cook a mean dal makhani.It’s a match made in heaven that might even curry favor with his tradition-minded parents. Except, that is, for one small detail: Keshav was raised in an immersive and culturally rich Indian household by the Indian foster parents who adopted him, yet he himself is white.Still, the two are madly in love and ready to announce that to the world, starting with Naveen’s parents and the Gavaskar family.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent “The Last of Us” has become the most-viewed title ever on HBO’s subscription streaming service in Europe. Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday that the first season of the nine-episode apocalyptic-drama has smashed HBO’s SVOD European viewer ratings. This result comes after the season one finale set another ratings high in the U.S. on Sunday night, delivering 8.2 million viewers across HBO Max and linear telecasts, based on Nielsen and first party data. The series, which is based on the critically acclaimed video game of the same name developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation, has been a hit from the get go. “The Last of Us” is now averaging 30.4 million viewers in the U.S. across its first six episodes, according to HBO, with the first episode approaching 40 million viewers in the U.S. Outside of the U.S.. The show is now also the most-watched show ever on HBO Max in Latin America.

Carlos Alcaraz just won his 100th professional match!

Naman Ramachandran The writing team of Iran’s Jafar Panahi and Nader Saeivar, who won best screenplay at Cannes for “3 Faces” (2018) directed by Panahi, have reunited for “The Witness.” To be directed by Saeivar, the project has been selected for the 21st Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), the project market that operates concurrently with FilMart (March 13-16). Saeivar made his feature debut with “The Alien” (2020), which was a Berlinale selection and won prizes at the Beijing, Hong Kong, Duhok, Taormina and International Crime and Punishment film festivals. Saeivar’s sophomore feature, “No End,” debuted at Busan in 2022 and won him best director at Goa and a brace of awards at Vesoul recently.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “We need more love stories, even if they have their ups and downs,” says Hong Kong-based producer Cora Yim, who is behind the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) in-development project “The Marriage Drive.” HAF runs takes place alongside the FilMart rights market.  The film is a simple-to-describe idea that writer-director Lawrence Kan has been kicking around and developing for some six years. The story involves a middle-class professional couple — he’s in the legal sector, she’s in finance — and tracks their childless, but not loveless, marriage over a period of 10 years from marriage to divorce.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese director Zhang Hanyi takes an unexpected turn with his latest feature film effort, “The Walking Bird,” which makes its appearance as an in-development project at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), which takes place alongside the FilMart rights market.  His previous film, 2017’s “Dragonfly Eyes,” was one of the most unusual and stylish films of the year from anywhere in the world. It told a disturbing (fictional) narrative through extraordinary found-footage obtained from hundreds of real-world CCTV cameras, and won the FIPRESCI and Ecumenical Jury prizes at the Locarno Festival that year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Work-in-progress film project “The Remnant” is both a spotlight on those who feel powerless and also a very Hong Kong example of elements of the city pulling themselves up. “The Remnant” is one of the projects in the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) unspooling March 13-15 alongside Hong Kong’s Filmart market. It tells the story of a former gangster who, upon his release from prison, sets up a laundry in an anonymous district and lives a quiet life. After property developers try to grab a rundown building, young gangsters try to throw people out of the building, drug addicts cause trouble and the old-timer heeds his neighbors’ calls and fights back.