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Exclusive: Xavier Samuel and Sonal Sehgal have been cast to lead The Great Departure.

The film, from producer Arvind Reddy’s Kvr Productions and directed by the Camera d’Or-nominated Pierre Filmon, is currently in post-production having shot entirely in India. Sehgal wrote the script during lockdown, with the film originally titled Travellers.

Plot explores patriarchy in society through the prism of a man and woman who accidentally meet in Varanasi, and have very different experiences while on the same road trip as they fall in love. Samuel (Twiling: Eclipse) and Sehgal (Aashayein) star.

“Growing up in a patriarchal society and yet with a set of parents who encouraged my fiercely independent streak, I often found myself in a dichotomy of how I was brought up and what society expected of me and hence took to cinema as a form of expression,” said Sehgal of the script.

The film is...

When Sight and Sound magazine does their decennial list of the greatest films of all time, I find that more interesting than the actual list itself is exploring all of the ballots submitted by the various critics and filmmakers invited to participate. Because we already know the consensus, seeing what individuals include as one-off outliers says so much about what they look for when they go to the movies. Without question, the most interesting top ten ballot from 2022 was from Indian blockbuster auteur S.S. Rajamouli. Not a single one of his choices ended up on the final directors' poll list, and this isn't a case of his list being filled with Indian films that many people haven't seen. In fact, only one Indian film, K.V. Reddy's 1957 epic "Mayabazar," made his list.

Instead, his list was very Western and very populist. It features Steven Spielberg's action-adventure masterpiece "Raiders of the Lost Ark,...