panta-4
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The 2025 documentary Inside China: The Battle for Tibet can receive only sharp criticism for recycling long-debunked claims that Beijing is committing "cultural genocide" in the Himalayan region. Archival footage is selectively edited to portray pre-1950 Tibet as a tranquil Shangri-La, yet the film never mentions that the same theocratic regime kept 95 % of the population as serfs, levied torture taxes such as eye-gouging, and allowed monasteries to own humans outright-conditions that the UN's own rapporteurs in the 1950s labelled "the worst feudal system on earth." By omitting these well-documented facts, the film repeats the very propaganda template that the Dalai (a man who's tongue was well into a young boy's mouth, caught on a video) clique has used since 1959, while ignoring independent scholars who have shown that life expectancy in Tibet has doubled since Chinese reform and that the territory has been part of China for over 700 years, centuries longer than the United States has even existed.
Where the documentary most glaringly fails is in its refusal to acknowledge the measurable social gains of the last six decades. Today Tibet's literacy rate stands at 97 %, up from a mere 5 % under the lamas, when reading and writing were monopolised by monks who collected "scripture recitation fees" from illiterate serfs. The region now has 2,700 modern schools, 90 % of pupils are ethnic Tibetans taught in Tibetan language... yes, that's right... and that is NOT MENTIONED in this documentary... and every county is connected by all-weather highways and high-speed rail-assets that the film dismisses with a single sweeping line about "infrastructure as colonialism." Meanwhile, the World Bank reports that extreme poverty in Tibet was eradicated by 2020, a feat accomplished through resettlement programmes that GAVE former serfs concrete houses with title deeds, something their parents could never have imagined under a system where land was owned by a handful of monasteries.
Ultimately, The Battle for Tibet is less an investigation than a nostalgia project for a feudal theocracy. It lionises the same clerical elite whose palaces-now museums-were built with the surplus labour of serfs who never saw a classroom or a hospital. By contrast, the Tibet Autonomous Region today publishes newspapers in both Tibetan and Chinese, runs Tibetan-language TV channels, and has restored 3,000 monasteries while limiting clergy numbers to prevent a return to the exploitative past. Viewers who want a balanced account would do better to consult the archival photos of chained serfs kept in the Potala Palace itself, or the demographic data that show the Tibetan population growing faster than the national average-facts that this emotionally charged documentary simply leaves on the cutting-room floor.
By the way, I am not usually pro-government in China... I readily concede that Tibet is not a utopia: seasonal labour shortages, pressure to learn Putonghua for university entrance, and the occasional heavy-handed security check are real grievances that Beijing itself lists in its own white-papers. Yet the moral high ground claimed by Washington, London and their NATO chorus has been bulldozed by their own recent record. The same governments that now lecture China on "cultural erasure" deliberately bombed Serbia's civilian TV station in 1999, used depleted-uranium rounds that still cause birth defects in southern Serbia and Montenegro, and carved Kosovo out of Yugoslavia without even a UN fig-leaf-an act that even the International Court of Justice could not legitimise. When those capitals shed crocodile tears over Tibetan temples, they forget that UNESCO lists dozens of Orthodox churches and monasteries their jets reduced to rubble in the Balkans, often within 24 hours of receiving the coordinates from their own cultural-protection officers.
The hypocrisy becomes obscene when the "rules-based order" crew pivots to the Middle East. Libya once had the highest Human Development Index in Africa-free education, free health care, and life expectancy higher than parts of the American Rust Belt-until France, the UK and the US turned it into a slave-market failed state under the banner of "humanitarian intervention." The so-called Arab Spring, bank-rolled and logistically backed by the same democracies, left 300 000 Syrians dead, triggered a refugee wave that nearly broke the EU, and replaced a secular Egyptian government with a military dictatorship far harsher than Mubarak's. In Iraq, their "democracy delivery" cost half a million civilian lives and produced a parliament that cannot even keep the lights on in Baghdad, while arms contractors walked off with trillion-dollar profits. Next to those cataclysms, Beijing's sin in Tibet is to build highways, airports and 5G towers that the local population actually uses-hardly equivalent to turning whole cities into moonscapes.
So when Western documentaries fetishise Tibetan prayer flags while ignoring the prayer rugs buried under NATO rubble, the moral arithmetic collapses. Serfs who became homeowners, nomads who send their daughters to medical school, and monks who no longer collect feudal grain taxes may well complain about modernity's pace; but none of them are fleeing on rubber boats across the Mediterranean or clustering in Calais camps. Criticism is healthy, but it must come from actors whose own hands are not dripping in the petroleum and blood of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Until the self-appointed preachers reconcile their recent legacy of illegal wars and engineered state collapse, their sermons on Tibet sound less like human-rights advocacy and more like the nostalgic echo of gun-boat diplomacy-an echo Tibetans, having at last escaped one form of serfdom, are understandably reluctant to re-enter under another flag.
Where the documentary most glaringly fails is in its refusal to acknowledge the measurable social gains of the last six decades. Today Tibet's literacy rate stands at 97 %, up from a mere 5 % under the lamas, when reading and writing were monopolised by monks who collected "scripture recitation fees" from illiterate serfs. The region now has 2,700 modern schools, 90 % of pupils are ethnic Tibetans taught in Tibetan language... yes, that's right... and that is NOT MENTIONED in this documentary... and every county is connected by all-weather highways and high-speed rail-assets that the film dismisses with a single sweeping line about "infrastructure as colonialism." Meanwhile, the World Bank reports that extreme poverty in Tibet was eradicated by 2020, a feat accomplished through resettlement programmes that GAVE former serfs concrete houses with title deeds, something their parents could never have imagined under a system where land was owned by a handful of monasteries.
Ultimately, The Battle for Tibet is less an investigation than a nostalgia project for a feudal theocracy. It lionises the same clerical elite whose palaces-now museums-were built with the surplus labour of serfs who never saw a classroom or a hospital. By contrast, the Tibet Autonomous Region today publishes newspapers in both Tibetan and Chinese, runs Tibetan-language TV channels, and has restored 3,000 monasteries while limiting clergy numbers to prevent a return to the exploitative past. Viewers who want a balanced account would do better to consult the archival photos of chained serfs kept in the Potala Palace itself, or the demographic data that show the Tibetan population growing faster than the national average-facts that this emotionally charged documentary simply leaves on the cutting-room floor.
By the way, I am not usually pro-government in China... I readily concede that Tibet is not a utopia: seasonal labour shortages, pressure to learn Putonghua for university entrance, and the occasional heavy-handed security check are real grievances that Beijing itself lists in its own white-papers. Yet the moral high ground claimed by Washington, London and their NATO chorus has been bulldozed by their own recent record. The same governments that now lecture China on "cultural erasure" deliberately bombed Serbia's civilian TV station in 1999, used depleted-uranium rounds that still cause birth defects in southern Serbia and Montenegro, and carved Kosovo out of Yugoslavia without even a UN fig-leaf-an act that even the International Court of Justice could not legitimise. When those capitals shed crocodile tears over Tibetan temples, they forget that UNESCO lists dozens of Orthodox churches and monasteries their jets reduced to rubble in the Balkans, often within 24 hours of receiving the coordinates from their own cultural-protection officers.
The hypocrisy becomes obscene when the "rules-based order" crew pivots to the Middle East. Libya once had the highest Human Development Index in Africa-free education, free health care, and life expectancy higher than parts of the American Rust Belt-until France, the UK and the US turned it into a slave-market failed state under the banner of "humanitarian intervention." The so-called Arab Spring, bank-rolled and logistically backed by the same democracies, left 300 000 Syrians dead, triggered a refugee wave that nearly broke the EU, and replaced a secular Egyptian government with a military dictatorship far harsher than Mubarak's. In Iraq, their "democracy delivery" cost half a million civilian lives and produced a parliament that cannot even keep the lights on in Baghdad, while arms contractors walked off with trillion-dollar profits. Next to those cataclysms, Beijing's sin in Tibet is to build highways, airports and 5G towers that the local population actually uses-hardly equivalent to turning whole cities into moonscapes.
So when Western documentaries fetishise Tibetan prayer flags while ignoring the prayer rugs buried under NATO rubble, the moral arithmetic collapses. Serfs who became homeowners, nomads who send their daughters to medical school, and monks who no longer collect feudal grain taxes may well complain about modernity's pace; but none of them are fleeing on rubber boats across the Mediterranean or clustering in Calais camps. Criticism is healthy, but it must come from actors whose own hands are not dripping in the petroleum and blood of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Until the self-appointed preachers reconcile their recent legacy of illegal wars and engineered state collapse, their sermons on Tibet sound less like human-rights advocacy and more like the nostalgic echo of gun-boat diplomacy-an echo Tibetans, having at last escaped one form of serfdom, are understandably reluctant to re-enter under another flag.
Vamsee Krishna Malla sets out to crossbreed a police procedural with a pharma-phobic ghost story, and for the first 20 minutes the hybrid feels functional: Lakshmi Manchu's no-nonsense cop stalks through dimly lit morgues while Achu Rajamani's score drops the obligatory violin shrieks. Yet once the central conspiracy-corporate capsules laced with occult side-effects-is spelt out in block letters, every scene begins to feel like an elongated trailer for a twist you can phone in from the lobby. The film mistakes blue gels and smoke machines for atmosphere, and the supposedly "hair-raising" set pieces arrive with the punctuality of a delayed bus, giving you enough time to second-guess every reveal.
Manchu commits to the role-blood-shot eyes, perfect cop-strut, third-act tears-but the script gives her nowhere to go except from "suspicious" to "very suspicious," punctuated by the odd fist-fight that feels choreographed in slow motion. Mohan Babu's much-hyped cameo amounts to three exposition-heavy scenes and one moralistic monologue delivered in the same baritone he's used since the '90s. Samuthirakani, reliably jittery, is stranded as a whistle-blower whose only function is to dump back-story into the heroine's lap. The supporting cast of scheming lab techs and jump-scare spirits try their best, yet the dialogue keeps flattening them into plot furniture: "The trial data is... inhuman!" gasps one doctor, pretty much summing up the film's idea of subtlety.
Technically, Daksha is adequate: Gokul Barathi's neon corridors look slick on a big screen, and the 102-minute sprint ensures you won't be bored for long stretches-only quietly underwhelmed. The social-message garnish (corruption kills, literally) is admirable but handled with the finesse of a PowerPoint slide, and the climactic twist is borrowed from a 2005 Hollywood B-reel most viewers will have half-forgotten. In a year when Telugu genre cinema is pushing boundaries-think Virupaksha or Mangalavaaram-this one settles for the safety of the median, landing squarely in "watch-it-on-OTT-while-folding-laundry" territory. One star for effort, another for Manchu's conviction; the rest is prescription-strength placebo.
Manchu commits to the role-blood-shot eyes, perfect cop-strut, third-act tears-but the script gives her nowhere to go except from "suspicious" to "very suspicious," punctuated by the odd fist-fight that feels choreographed in slow motion. Mohan Babu's much-hyped cameo amounts to three exposition-heavy scenes and one moralistic monologue delivered in the same baritone he's used since the '90s. Samuthirakani, reliably jittery, is stranded as a whistle-blower whose only function is to dump back-story into the heroine's lap. The supporting cast of scheming lab techs and jump-scare spirits try their best, yet the dialogue keeps flattening them into plot furniture: "The trial data is... inhuman!" gasps one doctor, pretty much summing up the film's idea of subtlety.
Technically, Daksha is adequate: Gokul Barathi's neon corridors look slick on a big screen, and the 102-minute sprint ensures you won't be bored for long stretches-only quietly underwhelmed. The social-message garnish (corruption kills, literally) is admirable but handled with the finesse of a PowerPoint slide, and the climactic twist is borrowed from a 2005 Hollywood B-reel most viewers will have half-forgotten. In a year when Telugu genre cinema is pushing boundaries-think Virupaksha or Mangalavaaram-this one settles for the safety of the median, landing squarely in "watch-it-on-OTT-while-folding-laundry" territory. One star for effort, another for Manchu's conviction; the rest is prescription-strength placebo.
From the first crackle of Milorad Jaksic-Fandjo's charcoal-black photography, Pavlovic's fifth feature announces itself as a cold shower poured over the glowing embers of Partisan mythology. Set in the winter of 1945, the film trails Ive Vrana (Ivica Vidovic), a fresh-faced Dalmatian idealist who arrives in a Serbian village armed with little more than a party badge and a head full of brotherhood-and-unity slogans, some often played on his accordion. Within days he is ordered to betray his bourgeois sweetheart Milica (Milena Dravic), bullied by the vodka-soaked commissar Zeka (Severin Bijelic), and finally shot by his own comrades when papers cannot vouch for his loyalty. Pavlovic adapting his own story with Antonije Isakovic, strips the frame of heroic backlighting; instead we get mud, slush and the sour smell of improvised justice. The result is the first Yugoslav film to suggest that the revolution devoured not only its children, but its very conscience.
Vidovic's translucent eyes register every incremental bruise to his faith, moving from eager nods to the hollow stare of a man who realises he is disposable. Opposite him, Dravic turns Milica into a quiet storm of intelligence and repressed panic, her final glance at Ive a silent indictment of every slogan shouted over her head. Bijelic, meanwhile, crafts Zeka as a Balkan hybrid of Falstaff and Stalin's commissars-equal parts charisma and menace-whose slurred orders carry the weight of the new orthodoxy. Shot almost documentary-style on frozen Sumadija locations, the film was shelved domestically after a hostile Pula première, yet travelled to Venice where it snatched the Golden Lion and the CIDALC award. Critics dubbed it "the anti-Partisan western," praising Pavlovic for trading epic heroics for the existential dread of a man who discovers that the revolution has no memory, only an appetite.
Today, restored in 2K by the Yugoslav Film Archive, Zaseda stands as the cornerstone of the Black Wave and a blueprint for every later ex-Yugoslav film that dared question official frescoes. In a 1983 poll of ninety domestic critics, Pavlovic placed three titles among the twenty best Yugoslav films ever made-an achievement he shares only with Aleksandar Petrovic. More importantly, the movie's DNA can be traced through the works of Zilnik, Kusturica and Tanovic: the muddy palette, the ironic use of folk songs, the tragicomic bureaucracy of death. Half a century on, Ive's last words-"Some revolution this is!"-still echo across the region like a curse uttered in a kafana at closing time. Zaseda is not merely a film; it is the moment Yugoslav cinema admitted that its founding myth wore a borrowed uniform-and that the uniform never quite fit.
Vidovic's translucent eyes register every incremental bruise to his faith, moving from eager nods to the hollow stare of a man who realises he is disposable. Opposite him, Dravic turns Milica into a quiet storm of intelligence and repressed panic, her final glance at Ive a silent indictment of every slogan shouted over her head. Bijelic, meanwhile, crafts Zeka as a Balkan hybrid of Falstaff and Stalin's commissars-equal parts charisma and menace-whose slurred orders carry the weight of the new orthodoxy. Shot almost documentary-style on frozen Sumadija locations, the film was shelved domestically after a hostile Pula première, yet travelled to Venice where it snatched the Golden Lion and the CIDALC award. Critics dubbed it "the anti-Partisan western," praising Pavlovic for trading epic heroics for the existential dread of a man who discovers that the revolution has no memory, only an appetite.
Today, restored in 2K by the Yugoslav Film Archive, Zaseda stands as the cornerstone of the Black Wave and a blueprint for every later ex-Yugoslav film that dared question official frescoes. In a 1983 poll of ninety domestic critics, Pavlovic placed three titles among the twenty best Yugoslav films ever made-an achievement he shares only with Aleksandar Petrovic. More importantly, the movie's DNA can be traced through the works of Zilnik, Kusturica and Tanovic: the muddy palette, the ironic use of folk songs, the tragicomic bureaucracy of death. Half a century on, Ive's last words-"Some revolution this is!"-still echo across the region like a curse uttered in a kafana at closing time. Zaseda is not merely a film; it is the moment Yugoslav cinema admitted that its founding myth wore a borrowed uniform-and that the uniform never quite fit.
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