News

Renée Zellweger has been nominated as best actress in this year’s National Film Academy awards for her return to the ‘Bridget Jones’ franchise.The group officially unveiled the full list of nominees on Tuesday (20.05.25) for its highly anticipated 11th annual edition of the prestigious National Film Awards UK. It said: “This year’s awards celebrate excellence in British and international film and television, recognising talent from emerging newcomers to established icons.”The ceremony is set to take place at the iconic Porchester Hall in London on 2 July.Public voting is live 19 May to 19 June on the National Film Academy website.Along with Renée for her role in ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’, the best actress category includes Saoirse Ronan (for ‘The Outrun’), Daisy Ridley (‘Cleaner’), and Stephanie Beacham (‘Grey Matter’.) On the Best Actor side, the competition is fierce with Aaron Pierre (‘Rebel Ridge’), Barry Keoghan (‘Bring Them Down...

The BFI has revealed the lineup of titles it will take to the upcoming Cannes Market as part of its Great 8 initiative for first and second-time filmmakers.

The list of features includes Animol, the debut feature from Top Boy actor Ashley Walters, and Madfabulous from filmmaker Celyn Jones. The BFI will present the features to international buyers in Cannes. The full list of titles are:

Animol – director Ashley Walters, writer Nick Love Ish – director Imran Perretta, writers Imran Perretta, Enda Walsh Learning to Breathe Under Water – director Rebekah Fortune, writer Richard Brabin Madfabulous – director Celyn Jones, writer Lisa Baker Mission – director/writer Paul Wright On the Sea – director/writer Helen Walsh Retreat – director/writer Ted Evans The Son and the Sea – director Stroma Cairns, writers Imogen West, Stroma Cairns

Now in its eighth year, the 2025 Great 8 showcase is funded and produced by the BFI and the British Council. As part of the scheme,...

Ashley Walters’ feature directorial debut Animol and Celyn Jones’ second feature, Madfabulous, are among the eight projects taking part in the 2025 Cannes Great 8 online showcase of UK feature films from first-and second-time UK filmmakers.

Animol is written by Nick Love, with Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor among the producers. It is a BFI, Film4 and Sky-backed coming-of-age story that takes place within the confines of a young offenders’ institution. Stephen Graham, with whom Walters’ co-starred in Netflix seriesAdolescence,is among the cast.

Madfabulous is Jones’ second film followingThe Almond And The Seahorse.Set in the 19th century, it isinspired by the flamboyant life...

The British Council and British Film Institute have unveiled the crop of films that will make up its annual Great 8 lineup of projects to be showcased in Cannes.

The features — from either first-time or early career filmmakers — will be introduced and screened to buyers and festival programmers in Cannes, where all eight will be available to distributors at the market.

This year marks the eighth year of the Great 8 initiative, funded and produced by the BFI and British Council with thanks to BBC Film and Film 4. Previous films to have been selected include Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun,” Rungano Nyoni’s “I Am Not A Witch” and Rose Glass’s “Saint Maud.”

“The 8th edition of Great 8 shows once again that UK film is in rude health with an upcoming slate that we can be proud of,” said Briony Hanson, the British Council’s Director of Film. “Again, this shows off...

As has become annual tradition, the British Film Institute (BFI) has unveiled its 2025 crop of “Great 8” movies, eight features from the “most exciting first-time and early career filmmakers” that it will showcase to international distributors and festival programmers in the run-up to and during the Marché du Film market taking place during the Cannes Film Festival.

They include a movie directed by actor and creative Ashley Walters (Netflix hit Adolescence, Top Boy, Missing You) with Stephen Graham, a drama thriller starring George MacKay and Rosy McEwen, a drama featuring Rory Kinnear and Maria Bakalova, a thriller set in an isolated deaf community, and a Welsh alternative period drama with Rupert Everett.

“Now in its eighth year, the 2025 Great 8 showcase is funded and produced by the BFI and the British Council, with thanks to BBC Film and Film4,” the BFI said. “In preparation for the Marché, unseen footage from all of...

Exclusive: Rebel Moon star Staz Nair is replacing Sacha Dhawan as lead of upcoming Bradford-set BBC crime thriller Virdee.

Doctor Who star Dhawan has dropped out due to scheduling issues, Deadline is told, and will be replaced in the Harry Virdee role by the actor who has also appeared in Game of Thrones and Supergirl.

The adaptation of AA Dhand’s thriller, which Dhand is penning, has unveiled full cast including Aysha Kala (Criminal Record, Indian Summers) as Saima Virdee, Harry’s wife, Nina Singh (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry) as Tara Virdee, Harry’s niece and a keen crime reporter, with Vikash Bhai (Crossfire, Limbo) playing Harry’s brother-in-law Riaz Hyatt. Kulvinder Ghir (Foundation, Blinded By The Light) and Sudha Bhuchar (Expats, Rules of the Game) will play Harry Virdee’s parents, Ranjit and Jyoti. Other cast include Elizabeth Berrington (Good Omens), Danyal Ismail (All the Lights Still...

Indo-British sports drama “A Game of Two Halves,” which champions equal opportunities for underprivileged children through soccer, has unveiled its first trailer.

The coming-of-age film, set across the U.K. and India, follows Sanjay, a young British student grappling with questions of belonging. Lost in the pressures of academia, he finds himself in Hyderabad, India, coaching underprivileged children on the dusty soccer fields. It’s in this unexpected setting, surrounded by vibrant energy and raw talent, that Sanjay unlocks his true self.

The film is directed by British Asian filmmaker Khayam Khan (“Bus Ride”). The cast includes Saaj Raja (Marvel’s “Eternals”), Harish Khanna (“12th Fail”), Lucy Jackson (“The Ride”), Swaroopa Ghosh (“War”), Nikkita Chadha (“Barbie”), Sudha Bhuchar (“Mary Poppins Returns”), Chizzy Akudolu (“Holby City”), Rajiv Kumar Aneja (“Tiger Nageswara Rao”), Pawan Chopra (“Asur”) and Sachin Chaudhary (“Sacred Games”).

The film is written by Shirley Day (“My Day”). It is produced by Nicola Gregory,...

“Expats” star Sarayu Blue remembers the first time imposter syndrome bowled her over.

She was on set for David E. Kelley’s “Monday Mornings” with the “inimitable” Alfred Molina, who just performed a big speech in a key scene.

“We got done, and we were walking to our rooms and he turned back and he said, ‘Was that all right?'” Blue recalled in a conversation with IndieWire. “And I looked behind me cause I thought, ‘Well, he can’t be asking me, who the hell am I?'”

After assuring Molina that he was “brilliant,” Blue remembered realizing: “In that moment, I thought ‘Oh, we never quite release that impostor syndrome.’ We always will check. ‘Did I get that? Did we get it?’ It was a beautiful moment, and I love him so much.”

Going into “Expats” with Nicole Kidman, Blue was experienced at working with big stars and...

Indo-British sports drama “A Game of Two Halves,” which tackles themes of identity crisis and racial dissonance, is set for a global bow in 2024.

Directed by British Asian filmmaker Khayam Khan (“Bus Ride”), the film is set across the U.K. and India. It chronicles the transformative, coming-of-age journey of Sanjay, a young British student who discovers his true self not amidst the academic pressures of a prestigious university, but on the dusty fields of Hyderabad, India, while teaching soccer to underprivileged children.

The cast includes Saaj Raja (“Eternals”), Harish Khanna (“12th Fail”), Lucy Jackson (“The Ride”), Swaroopa Ghosh (“War”), Nikkita Chadha (“Barbie”), Sudha Bhuchar (“Mary Poppins Returns”), Chizzy Akudolu (“Holby City”), Rajiv Kumar Aneja (“Tiger Nageswara Rao”), Pawan Chopra (“Asur”) and Sachin Chaudhary (“Sacred Games”).

The film is written by Shirley Day (“My Day”). It is produced by Nicola Gregory and Sheila Nortley under the banners K Squared Films,...

Actor and writer, Sudha Bhuchar has launched a warm-hearted monologue style podcast. Middle class, middle aged, multicultural mother of millennial sons, Sudha lives a ‘squeezed middle’ life in Wimbledon. Balancing her career, family and returning to India as a non-resident Indian, she investigates her own sense of home and place in the world. Originally performed on stage, Evening Conversations is inspired by Sudha’s banter with her dual-heritage millennial sons who have grown up in leafy Wimbledon while her life has taken in three continents.

And the UK Asian Film Festival Tongues on Fire Flame Award winners are…

In its 22nd edition, the UK Asian Film Festival once again offered an eclectic mix of films to celebrate, award, and reward great films, filmmakers, and artists from South Asia. The festival provides a unique platform for Asians working in film and media worldwide. Presented by Tongues on Fire, the 22nd edition ran in venues across London, Birmingham, Leicester, Coventry, Warwick, Bradford, Stockton, and Glasgow; and online via BFI Player and Modern Films. Tongues on Fire is a not-for-profit organisation that provides a platform for independent film and arts with a link to South Asia. They “give wings to South Asian roots,” celebrating South Asian culture, its vibrancy, and its many dimensions through storytelling, live events, master classes, and cinema screenings. The company provides a platform for emerging talent to showcase their work, offers networking occasions with industry leaders,...

Riz Ahmed has his musical career derailed by the sudden onset of a degenerative disease. The basic premise sounds familiar — the actor plays a similar role in the Oscar-nominated “Sound of Metal” — but “Mogul Mowgli” is a wildly different beast, thanks to both its raw aesthetic approach, and its surreal, occasionally hilarious magnification of diaspora anxieties. Ahmed, who co-wrote the film with director Bassam Tariq, plays a late-blooming, London-born Pakistani rapper with a focus on identity. He’s Zed to his fans, Zaheer to his friends, and Zuzu to his mum (Sudha Bhuchar). Once his career takes off in New York, an autoimmune disease leaves him unable to walk, let alone attend his breakout European tour, and before long, it sends him tumbling down a rabbit-hole of delirium.

Zed’s physical battle coincides with his first trip home in years, and the gap in generational Pov is readily apparent. On its surface,...

For a while now Riz Ahmed has been one of the most exciting British actors around but he’s rarely afforded the right platform to truly show off his talents. With Mogul Mowgli, which he stars, co-produces and co-writes in, Ahmed confirms his talents emphatically with a tour de force performance. Directed by Bassam Tariq, the narrative charts the journey of British-Pakistani rapper, Zed (Ahmed), who is struck down by a muscle-wasting autoimmune disease just when his career is starting to take off.

The film begins on Zed performing an impassioned rap on stage in front of an adoring crowd. Zed is just about to embark on a massive US tour that will propel him into the big time, so he decides to pay his London-based family a visit for the first time in two years before he takes off. But he isn’t received with the warmest of welcomes...

Profound drama about culture, family and what it means to represent a community

Riz Ahmed brings his intense and always engaging presence to this film as star, co-producer and co-writer with its director, Bassam Tariq. It is a deeply personal drama about culture, family, community and what it means to represent – though it can also be self-indulgent and even a bit self-involved, though this is arguably a function of the story.

Ahmed plays a British-Pakistani rapper, Zed, who has become a huge hit in New York, is preparing for a Us tour and is clearly on the verge of the big time (Ahmed’s own rapping is also impressive). Zed’s girlfriend suggests he uses the time before the tour stars to reconnect with his family in Wembley, London, whom he hasn’t seen in two years, especially his hardworking mum and dad (strong performances from Sudha Bhuchar and Alyy Khan).

Continue reading.

Riz Ahmed stars as a rapper on the cusp of fame forced to return home to his family after he is struck down by a crippling illness.

Paris-based sales company Charades has boarded sales on New York-based Pakistani director Bassam Tariq’s music drama Mogul Mowgli, starring actor and rapper Riz Ahmed, ahead of its premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama section.

Endeavor Content will represent North American rights.

Ahmed plays a young British rapper, who is about to start his first world tour, when a crippling illness strikes him down, and he is forced to move back in with his family.

Director Ben Wheatley is best known for his crazy films such as Kill List, Free Fire, Sightseers, High Rise, and A Field in England. He always does some crazy far-out stuff in his films and I’ve liked everything that he’s done.

He has now made a family reunion comedy that looks unlike anything that he’s made before. It’s called Happy New Year, Colin Burstead and even though it looks like it will be his most normal movie yet, I’m sure that won’t be the case. Wheatley has never made anything normal.

Here’s the synopsis:

Colin Burstead has hired a heritage mansion for a New Year's Eve party for his extended family and hangers-on, with his own wife Val, teenage daughter Fran, and infant son Jamie in tow. Colin's mother–the family's matriarch–dramatically injures her ankle before she has even crossed the manor house's threshold.

"You need to get your house in order!" Limelight Distribution has debuted a trailer for Ben Wheatley's latest film, a familial dramedy titled Happy New Year, Colin Burstead. This already showed on BBC TV last year, after touring around film festivals starting with the London Film Festival. The raucous "family reunion comedy" is about a man named Colin Burstead, of course, who has decided to rent a lavish country manor for his extended family to celebrate New Year. Unfortunately for Colin his position of power in the family is under serious threat from the arrival of his estranged brother David, sending everything into chaos. The cast includes Neil Maskell as Colin, with Sura Dohnke, Marvin Maskell, Nicole Nettleingham, Doon Mackichan, Bill Paterson, Hayley Squires, Mark Monero, Richard Glover, and Sudha Bhuchar. This looks great! This impressed me, and it still has Wheatley's style. I love the dramatic turn in the trailer.

Pulse Films and Left Handed Films producing project.

Pulse Films and Left Handed Films have completed the cast on their UK drama Mughal Mowgli, which has now begun shooting in London.

Joining Riz Ahmed in the feature are this year’s Royal Television Society Breakthrough Award winner Nabhaan Rizwan, who won the prize for his work on BBC/Amazon series Informer.

Also newly added to the film are Aiysha Hart, whose credits include Colette and Line Of Duty, Sex Education actor Anjana Vasan, Mary Poppins Returns actor Sudha Bhuchar, and The Valley actor Alyy Khan.

The project is the feature directing debut of Bassam Tariq,...

Stars: Neil Maskell, Sura Dohnke, Marvin Maskell, Nicole Nettleingham, Doon Mackichan, Bill Paterson, Hayley Squires, Mark Monero, Richard Glover, Sudha Bhuchar, Vincent Ebrahim, Sinead Matthews, Sarah Baxendale, Charles Dance, Joe Cole, Peter Ferdinando | Written and Directed by Ben Wheatley

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead follows in the stead of Ben Wheatley’s previous directing efforts, in particular his 2013 black and white acid trip exploit A Field in England, in the case of releasing his picture simultaneously on both demand and a limited cinematic release. However this may alos just be his unsung masterpiece in a filmography that continues to evoke a grand sense of evolution with each entry and distinctive palette, which reinforces Wheatley’s stunning artistic ability with every and any angle.

Wheatley’s latest is a somewhat ironic variation of his first cinematic feature in Down Terrace and his breakout action hit of 2016, Free Fire - with the...

Television and film stars including Lenny Henry and Kwame Kwei-Armah have called for broadcasters to implement quotas to increase racial diversity on UK screens.

The pair, speaking on the Flight of the Black Actor panel at Broadcast and Screen International’s Diversify conference yesterday, called for the broadcasters to implement legislation similar to The Rooney Rule, a racial quota system implemented in American NFL football that forces clubs to interview black and ethnic minority coaches.

“In high-end drama, there’s no faces that look like me. We need to lobby the government. Maybe quotas isn’t the right language, maybe we should call them shared targets,” said Henry, best known in the UK for his work with Comic Relief.

Casualty star Kwei-Armah added that black and ethnic minority actors needed to “punch through the glass ceiling” and lobby the government to improve processes.

“The Us set quotas. They did that thing that we’re so scared to do here...

Television and film stars including Lenny Henry and Kwame Kwei-Armah have called for broadcasters to implement quotas to increase racial diversity on UK screens.

The pair, speaking on the Flight of the Black Actor panel at Broadcast and Screen International’s Diversify conference yesterday, called for the broadcasters to implement legislation similar to The Rooney Rule, a racial quota system implemented in American NFL football that forces clubs to interview black and ethnic minority coaches.

“In high-end drama, there’s no faces that look like me. We need to lobby the government. Maybe quotas isn’t the right language, maybe we should call them shared targets,” said Henry, best known in the UK for his work with Comic Relief.

Casualty star Kwei-Armah added that black and ethnic minority actors needed to “punch through the glass ceiling” and lobby the government to improve processes.

“The Us set quotas. They did that thing that we’re so scared to do here...

London, June 30 – Well-known actor-playwright Sudha Bhuchar and artistic director Kristine Landon-Smith, joint founders of London-based Tamasha Theatre Company, have won this year’s prestigious First Women Awards in the entertainment category.

Now in their sixth year, the First Women Awards recognise women at the top of their professions, leading the way for the next generation. They are held in association with Lloyds Banking Group and supported by the Cbi and the Real Business.

Tamasha was formed in 1989 by Bhuchar and Landon-Smith with a mission.