City Kolkata Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorCameroon’s Cyrielle Raingou has won the Kirch Foundation Award, which comes with a €5,000 cash prize, for her film project “I’m Coming for You.”The award comes at the conclusion of the first edition of Munich Film Up!, an eight-month mentoring and residency program for film school graduates that started in November.The program was created by the Pop Up Film Residency, in partnership with the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF München) and the Munich Film Festival.The six filmmakers who took part in the program were:Lana Bregar, Slovenia (Film school: AGFRT Ljubljana) with “Dark Head” Erec Brehmer, Germany (Film school: HFF München) with “Lightness and Weight” Anastasiya Gruba, Ukraine (Film school: Kyiv University) with “Women Suicide Season” Loïc Hobi, Switzerland/France (Film school: Ecole de la Cité) with “Crypto Lover” Cyrielle Raingou, Cameroon (Film school: Doc Nomads Master) with “I’m Coming for You” Pratik Thakare, India (Film school: Satyajit Ray Institute Kolkata) with “A Midnight Meal” “I’m Coming for You,” which is still at an early stage of development, centers on Karthoumi, a young mother. Always wearing a hijab, she rides a Bobber motorcycle across Africa’s Sahel region to trade with Boko Haram terrorists.

Naman Ramachandran Kumar Shahani, one of the pioneers of India’s arthouse parallel cinema movement, died at a hospital in Kolkata on Feb. 24 after a period of illness. He was 83.

Naman Ramachandran Pan Nalin, producer and director of Indian Oscar-shortlisted film “Last Film Show,” has boarded Subhadra Mahajan’s debut feature “Second Chance” as an executive producer. Mahajan previously served as assistant director on Nalin’s “Echo of Eco,” “Angry Indian Goddesses,” “Beyond the Known World” and “Last Film Show.” “Second Chance,” now in the final stages of post-production, was launched at India’s Film Bazaar co-production market in 2020, and has participated in labs and development programs including Film Independent Global Media Makers Program 2022, the Cannes market co-production day 2021 and Produire Au Sud Kolkata. The film follows city girl Nia who visits her family home in the western Himalayas after a decade, in the dead of winter, alone.

Sophia Sun Intern Indian director Suman Sen (Oscar-nominated short film “The Silent Echo”) is at the 2023 Taiwan Creative Content Fest with his in-development debut feature film “Solo” (aka “Solo”). The film will center around a story about a mundane 62-year-old diabetic insurance worker, Biplab, who is tormented by everyday trivialities. Feeling frustrated and hopeless about the community he lives in, he begins to question the government’s choice to erect a massive statue.

Rapture, the second film from Indian filmmaker Dominic Sangma, is being presented with  the Cultural Diversity Award at this year’s Asia Pacific Screen Awards. 

Naman Ramachandran After 2011’s “Nobel Thief,” 2012’s “Uncle Shyamal Turns off the Lights,” 2015’s “Peace Haven,” 2016’s “Mi Amor” and 2019’s “Aadhaar,” Indian filmmaker Suman Ghosh returns again to the Busan International Film Festival. “The Scavenger of Dreams” has its world premiere in the ‘A Window On Asian Cinema’ strand. A treatise on social inequality, the film follows Birju (Shardul Bhardwaj, 2019 Mumbai Film Festival winner “Eeb Allay Ooo!”) and Shona (Sudipta Chakraborty, Ghosh’s “Searching for Happiness…”), trash collectors who live in a Kolkata slum with their young daughter.

Naman Ramachandran The birth centenary of Indian cinema icon Dev Anand will be celebrated with restored versions of some of his classics receiving a theatrical release across the country. Known as one of the triumvirate of superstars who ruled Hindi-language cinema in the 1950s and ’60s (along with the late Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar) Anand made such hits as “Guide,” “Hare Rama Hare Krishna” and “Prem Pujari.” The birth centenary of Anand, who died in 2011, is on Sept. 26.

The mystical and the industrial cross paths in this haunting debut from India, screening at this year’s Locarno Film Festival in the event’s parallel competition for first and second movies. It begins in an almost documentary style, showing the harsh, eerie beauty of Jharia, a once-proud mining community that’s now an apocalyptic ruin of a city, where toxic waste is dumped 24/7 and noxious fires burn just as endlessly. Midway through, however, Lubdhak Chatterjee’s film begins to change direction, as its passive hero becomes attuned to the natural mysteries lurking in the adjacent woods.  

Naman Ramachandran “Padatik,” a birth centenary homage to Indian auteur Mrinal Sen, is in post-production and is aiming to launch at a major film festival this fall. Sen is probably India’s most revered filmmaker after Satyajit Ray. Sen was born on May 14, 1923 in Faridpur, British India, now in Bangladesh and died in 2018, leaving behind a glittering array of work, most of which are considered landmarks of Indian cinema, including “Neel Akasher Neechey” (1959), “Baishey Shravana” (1960), “Akash Kusum” (1965), “Bhuvan Shome”(1969), “Interview,” (1971), “Calcutta 71” (1972), “Padatik” (1973), “Mrigayaa” (1976), “Ek Din Pratidin” (1979), “Akaler Sandhane” (1980), “Kharij” (1982) and “Khandhar” (1983).

Amazon Prime Video may be rethinking its relationship with Jeremy Clarkson, but it has doubled down on James May.

Naman Ramachandran Bollywood star Karisma Kapoor has made a triumphant return to acting with Zee Studios’ noir thriller “Brown,” the only Indian show at the Berlin Series Market Selects platform. Kapoor, one of the top movie stars in India in the 1990s and early 2000s, took a hiatus to devote time to her young family. She made a comeback with parenting-themed series “Mentalhood” for streamer ALTBalaji in 2020. “Brown” is her first acting gig since then. The series is based on the 2016 novel “City of Death” by Abheek Barua, adapted by Digvijay Singh, Sunayana Kumari and Mayukh Ghosh and directed by Abhinay Deo (“24: India”). It follows Rita Brown (Kapoor), a world-weary, recovering alcoholic, ace detective in the Kolkata police force belonging to the city’s small but influential Anglo-Indian community, who is assigned to the murder case of a young woman from a well-connected family.

India’s Reliance Entertainment and Singapore-based Continental Entertainment Private Limited (CEPL) are releasing Bangladesh’s Oscars submission Hawa (Wind) across India, marking the first time ever that a purely Bangladeshi film has received a wide pan-India release. 

Naman Ramachandran Leading Bengali-language focused streamer Hoichoi has unveiled a 25-strong Indian and Bangladeshi series slate on the occasion of its fifth anniversary of operations. Stepping into its sixth year, Hoichoi, revealed 21 shows from India and four from Bangladesh at a gala event in Kolkata on Tuesday. Content creators Srijit Mukherji, Dhrubo Banerjee, Anirban Bhattacharya, Sahana Dutta, Syed Ahmed Shawki, Ashfaque Nipun and others continue their journey with Hoichoi, while Raj Chakraborty and Arindam Sil are making their streaming debuts. Hoichoi co-founder Vishnu Mohta said that the streamer’s monthy active users have increased by 40% and its international user base has risen by 30%. Operated by studio SVF Entertainment, Hoichoi was launched in 2017.

Naman Ramachandran For India in general and the Sikh community in particular, 1984 is a particularly emotive year, including for musician and actor Diljit Dosanjh, the star of Netflix film “Jogi.” In June 1984, the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered an army operation against separatist militants at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, a holy location for Sikhs, that was criticized by many in the community. In October, Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her, leading to ant-Sikh riots across northern India, with the country’s capital Delhi as its epicenter. The happenings of 1984 left deep and enduring scars on the Sikh community and the events have been depicted in film and television over the years. In “Jogi,” directed by Ali Abbas Zafar (“Sultan”), Dosanjh plays the titular Jogi who takes it upon himself to heroically save his family and neighbors as politically-backed riot mobs in Delhi, including childhood friends from other communities, systematically target Sikhs during the 1984 riots.

th century.Author and New Orleans native Fatima Shaik is the granddaughter of an immigrant Bengali merchant named Shaik Mohamed Musa who, as was not uncommon when Indian men uprooted to segregated America, married a local African-American woman and blended into a welcoming Black community. Fatima never knew her grandfather — he died in 1919 before he could see his three children grow up — but she also grew up with little sense of her Indian heritage outside a treasured hookah of his that was lost in the Katrina flooding.Katrina’s devastation, which took loved ones of Fatima’s, spurred her to better understand a piece of her family tree that felt like an unfilled space, and in the documentary “The Bengali,” from Kolkata-born filmmaker Kavery Kaul, we’re with Fatima as she travels for the very first time to India to trace her grandfather’s existence, and hopefully to meet new relatives.

EXCLUSIVE: Arjun Rampal is on his way to a shoot in Poland after a week’s work in London and a short stop in his home country India when he sits down for a chat with Deadline.

KK, a popular Indian playback singer and songwriter with more than 300 film and TV credits, died Tuesday of cardiac arrest in Kolkata, shortly after performing a concert. He was 53.

Naman Ramachandran Krishnakumar Kunnath, the Indian singer popularly known as KK, died of a cardiac arrest while performing a concert at Nazrul Mancha, Kolkata on Tuesday. He was 53.Known as one of the most versatile singers in the country, KK sang across languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese and Gujarati.After a successful career singing advertising jingles, KK debuted in films in 1996 with Hindi and Telugu-language versions of composer A.R.

Naman Ramachandran A restored version of Indian master Satyajit Ray’s “The Adversary” is playing at Cannes Classics this year and films inspired by his works are being planned.Kolkata-based Indian producer-director Aritra Sen’s Roadshow Films and Los Angeles-based British writer-director Alex Harvey’s Big Bazaar Films are producing two films this year, which take their inspiration from Ray’s life and work. First up is feature documentary “Forest of Humans,” which looks at Ray’s creative relationship with Kolkata, the city where he lived and worked all his life.

Naman Ramachandran The Knight Riders Group (KRG), backed by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, alongside actor Juhi Chawla and businessman Jay Mehta, is investing in a 10,000-capacity cricket stadium near Los Angeles.Located at a 15-acre land parcel in Great Park, Irvine, Southern California, some 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles, the plan is driven by Major League Cricket (MLC). The org has revealed that an exclusive negotiating agreement with the city of Irvine to move forward with lease negotiations and design approvals has been approved.

Naman Ramachandran “Mujib: The Making of a Nation,” the biopic of late Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, is currently in post-production and a teaser will be unveiled at the Cannes Market in May. Popularly known as Bangabandhu (friend of Bengal), Rahman was one of the founders of the Awami League party and led the movement for political autonomy for East Pakistan and the subsequent formation of independent Bangladesh in 1971.

Naman Ramachandran Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s debut feature, “Labour of Love,” bowed at Venice Days in 2014 where it won the Fedeora Award for best director of a debut film, en route to winning several international awards and at home in India.

Soumitra Chatterjee, the legendary Indian actor with more than 200 movies to his name and famed for his work with Oscar-winning director Satyajit Ray, died Sunday of complications from the coronavirus. He was 85.

Bruce Haring pmc-editorial-managerIndian actor Soumitra Chatterjee, whose career spanned six decades and more than 300 films, died Sunday in Kolkata from health complications related to Covid-19. He was 85.A protégé of Oscar-winning director Satyajit Ray, Chatterjee died at Belle Vue Clinic after being there since October 6.

NEW DELHI -- Soumitra Chatterjee, the legendary Indian actor with more than 200 movies to his name and famed for his work with Oscar-winning director Satyajit Ray, died Sunday of complications from the coronavirus. He was 85.Chatterjee’s daughter, Poulami Bose, said her father died at a hospital in the city of Kolkata in West Bengal state where he had been staying since testing positive for the virus in early October.

Naman Ramachandran Indian actor Soumitra Chatterjee, best known internationally for his long association with Oscar-winning filmmaker Satyajit Ray, died on Sunday in Kolkata after contracting coronavirus. He was 85.Chatterjee was born in Calcutta in 1935.

straight to your inboxOctober 28, 2017 was a routine day for Manchester City.