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It’s refreshing when an Indian film dares to challenge conventional folklore in cinema and breathe new life into familiar narrative tropes. First-time director Bhargav Saikia has created an atmospheric, chilling, and sensual folk horror film in Bokshi. Using few special effects and subtly presenting the supernatural, the film maintains an elegantly restrained tone. Sound and visuals create a captivating experience, immersing us in an idyllic and nightmarish world. Skillfully navigating the lines between horror, bullying, psychodrama, and trauma, it is a satisfying work, marked by an impressively fluid visual style and anchored pivotal performances.

Anahita (Prasanna Bisht), a teenager who lost her mother at a young age, struggles to overcome the lingering trauma of her death. In a private act of remembrance, she gets a religious tattoo her mother wore, but this triggers disturbing dreams and a physical ailment of bedwetting. At home, her grandmother is a dominating figure,...

In Amp, and particularly in the case of this writer, genre mashups is a favorite movie style, even more so when they are accompanied by a sense of deliriousness. Bhargav Saikia, in his feature debut, comes up with a film that checks both boxes, and is currently premiering in Rotterdam. “Bokshi” was shot over 80 days across remote Himalayan terrains, was developed over five years and produced independently by Saikia’s Mumbai-based company, Lorien Motion Pictures. The title of the movie is primarily used in Nepali to denote a “witch” or a woman believed to practice black magic. In Nepali culture, this term carries significant negative connotations, often leading to social ostracization and persecution of women labeled as such.

Bokshi is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam

Anahita is a young girl who is definitely in trouble. Struggling with the trauma of her mother’s brutal disappearance, the girl has frequent nightmares,...

Hoard writer-director Luna Carmoon, Didi filmmaker Sean Wang and Baby Reindeer star Nava Mau are among 43 Bafta Breakthrough members for its 2024 cohort.

The 43 names consist of 21 UK creatives, 13 from the US and nine from India. The selected members hail from film, games and television, and will receive one-to-one meetings, career guidance, full Bafta voting membership and access to screenings and networking events in the year-long initiative.

Scroll down for the full list of Bafta Breakthrough 2024

Carmoon is one of several filmmakers in the selection, alongside If The Streets Were On Fire director Alice Russell, The Contestant director Clair Titley, and...

Mumbai, Feb 27 (Ians) Actress Taapsee Pannu on Saturday confessed that she thoroughly detests dubbing.

Taapsee shared a post on Instagram tagging sound designer Dhiman Karmakar and opened up on her experience of dubbing for her upcoming film "Dobaaraa".

"My #DobaaraaSeries. Coz some collaborations deserve to be repeated. Be it the chaotic and noisy lanes in Manmarziyaan or the deafening silence of Scotland in Badla, by now he surely knows that if there is one aspect of my job I thoroughly detest is dubbing. It's almost a ritual now that I tell @dhiman.karmakar make me wear how many ever mics but don't make me perform the scene in 4 walls of a tiny dubbing room #Dobaaraa. P.S- with maximum talking n minimum dubbing in Manmarziyaan n Badla I am looking forward to No Dubbing in this one. No pressure @dhiman.karmakar," she wrote.

The actress has recently started shooting for...

S ange Dorjee’s Crossing Bridges, which recently screened at the Mumbai Film Festival, is the first film made in Shertukpen, the dialect spoken by a tribal community of the same name in Arunachal Pradesh. Shot in the hilly villages of Arunachal Pradesh using a Canon 5D, the film will also be showcased at the upcoming International Film Festival of Kerala (Iffk) in December. Sange Dorjee, in conversation with DearCinema correspondent Anita Thomas:

Sange Dorjee

Your film is a comment on several issues grappling the remote and small towns of the country. Negligence of these towns, displacement of the youth etc. Is it an autobiographical film?

Displacement would be a good word, but not so much physical displacement as cultural or emotional one. My generation has had to leave home to get better higher-education and employment outside as the north eastern region doesn’t have the required infrastructure. The...