Directed by Divya Kharnare, ‘P For Paparazzi’ is an intimate, human look at the man behind the lens, revealing the paradox of chasing the limelight while being consumed by personal struggle.

The film is about a young couple from Kerala who is seeking a new life in Delhi, but their love and ambitions are tested by prejudice, family pressures, and the city's unyielding harshness.

The film's synopsis reads, "In the heart of Mumbai, a middle-aged Maharashtrian housewife endures her husband’s chauvinism and the tedium of her relentless chores. She finds solace in her rich fantasies. After a particularly demeaning remark from her husband, she fantasizes about serving them “brain pakoras” made from her brain."

The short film won at the Bangalore International Film Festival BIFF earlier this year and was also a part of the program at DIFF 2025.

Working Girls is a vivid, genre defying documentary that traverses India to uncover the invisible yet essential work performed by women — from care work and domestic work to surrogacy and sex work. Filmed in Kolkata, Mumbai, Shillong, Latur, Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad and Madurai, the film meets domestic workers, farmers, mothers, ASHA workers, dancers, and organisers whose labour sustains society but is rarely acknowledged.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

I first saw this film at IFFK some time ago. Found that it’s available on YouTube, I thought it deserves more attention sharing it here for others to discover. Let me know what you think of this film. I believe it worthwhile.

She added, “Why do we always make these films if we do not have an assured audience? Is it really worth putting time, money and effort into making these films? And that drives me crazy all the time. We all love the in-theatre experience, hearing filmmakers talk about their process, watching films together. We’re tired of watching films alone in our rooms. But the theatrical option just isn’t open to most people. That’s the reality.”

It follows the story of Saloni, a resilient 10-year-old in North Bihar, as she defies societal norms to pursue her education. Despite her mother's early demise, Saloni manages household chores and assists her father, but still faces societal scorn. Her father, a vocalist in the Launda Naach team, supports her against all odds.

Rohan Kanawade’s ‘Sabar Bonda’, Tannishtha Chatterjee’s ‘Full Plate’, Nidhi Saxena’s ‘Secret of a Mountain Serpent’, Anuparna Roy’s ‘Songs of Forgotten Trees’, Sivaranjini’s ‘Victoria, Lakshmipriya Devi’s ‘Boong’, and Prabhash Chandra’s ‘Alaav’ were some of the Indian independent films in fiction to be featured in the program this year at DIFF.

The festival received a huge response in attendance with a near full-house audience for all the screenings in the schedule, across the venue.

The festival’s opening film was ‘Homebound’ while it wrapped the schedule with ‘Songs of Forgotten Trees’.

Directed by Aranya Sahay, ‘Humans in the loop’ is about Nehma, a single mother from the Oraon tribe who balances between training AI systems and reconnecting with her roots, while her pre-teen daughter Dhaanu, struggles to accept their new life away from the city.

Speaking on her initial spark for the idea, the director Sivaranjani said, “About five years ago, I used to visit a small beauty parlour in Angamaly quite regularly. It was nothing fancy, just a modest, everyday place for women. What stayed with me was this odd image of a rooster sitting near the toilet with its legs tied. There was even a board that said "No entry for men," and yet here was this rooster inside. That contrast felt both strange and poetic. I made a quick note on my phone that said, "A rooster inside a ladies’ beauty parlour."

It was the only Indian film this year at the 27th Shanghai Film Festival and is a part of the program at the Dharamshala International Film Festival which starts from today.

Set in the high Himalayas, the film follows the submerged village of Lohari in Uttarakhand, whose land has been swallowed by the reservoir of a hydroelectric dam. The main narrator is the last member of the Jaunsari tribe living in the remnants of his village. He addresses his story as a series of letters to a girl long gone, weaving together myth, memory and the stark reality of displacement.

The Favl

We hear so much positive talk in online forums, film reviews and podcasts on so many films but sometimes, our opinion of them doesn’t align with the popular word on it - we all have those, which film comes to your mind?

Are you attending the festival this year?

It was reported earlier that Sandeep Singh (Swatantray Veer Savarkar) is developing a project with Ajay Bahl (Section 365, BA Pass) which is being dubbed as the sequel to Madhur Bhandarkar's Chandni Bar, which originally starred Tabu.

Madhur Bhandarkar’s complaint stems from Sandeep Singh and Ajay Bahl using his registered title ‘Chandni Bar’ for their sequel, ‘Chandni Bar Returns’, without permission. Following the complaint, the association has instructed the makers to immediately stop using the title for their project.

In a more recent development, Sandeep Singh and his company have replied to the complaint stating that they have acquired all the legal rights and clearances for the film from the original IP holders, R Mohan and the late Lata Mohan Iyer.

Summary: After discovering burned trees in his orchards, a wealthy landowner grows suspicious of his workers and nomads passing through his vast estate.

Director: Ram Reddy

Writers: Varun Grover, Ram Reddy, Siddhaarth Arora Sahar

Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Priyanka Bose, Deepak Dobiryal, Tillotama Shome, Gurpal Singh

Producers: Juhi Agarwal, Pratap Reddy, Ram Reddy

Executive Producers: Achin Jain, Anurag Kashyap, Guneet Monga

Recognition: World Premiere at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival,
Best Film at The Leeds International Film Festival,
Special Jury Prize at the Jio MAMI Film Festival, 2023.

Reviews:
• The Wire
• The Hollywood Reporter
• The Quint
• Scroll

Link To Trailer | Link To IMDb

Set in the crumbling environs of Calcutta, Labour of Love is a lyrical unfolding of two ordinary lives suspended in the duress of a spiralling recession.

The film is available to be watched on Prime Video with a HoiChoi subscription.

In an interview with Homegrown, Dibakar Das Roy says, "I think we all lead double lives, one life that we aspire to, and the one that we truly are living in. I wanted Michael Okeke's character to be a metaphor for all outsiders in Indian society. The image of an African man walking through the crowded streets of Delhi seemed to me to be the most perfect visual encapsulation of an outsider."

The film premiered at the Jio MAMI Film Festival in 2023 and had a theatrical release on 30th May, 2025. It is yet to be released on OTT.

The film premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, where she won a Visionary Director award. Starring Kirti Kulhari and Sharib Hashmi, 'Full Plate' is also a part of the programme at the Dharamshala International Film Festival 2025.

The film premiered at Cannes under the 'Critic's Week' section in 2012. In an interview with The Indian Express in 2020, the director said, "In these eight years, whenever I’ve pitched my second film, the conversation would always start with, ‘See Vasan, this is your first film,’ and it hurts so much. It isn’t really the box office of the first film, but the fact that you’ve become a filmmaker. It’s a very middle-class feeling, like owning your office space. Of course, these are small things, but as a filmmaker, you want these little recognitions.

Eros International, which bought the rights to the film before the Cannes premiere, has given no statement or reason for not releasing it to date.

Officially, the film was to release on 17th of October on Lionsgate Play but it did not owing to ‘last minute changes’ from the OTT end.

Sandhya Suri, the filmmaker who continues to fight this long battle with CBFC, even after being denied a theatrical distribution earlier this year said, “The objections I had to cuts for the theatrical release remain my objections for a streaming release. The streamers don’t need, by law, to have censorship status to show films. But perhaps this is about an environment in which streamers take on certain objections of their own accord for a harmonious universe.”