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Dibakar Banerjee’s LSD 2: Love, Sex, and Dhoka 2 intends to make your stomach churn, and it leaves you feeling uncomfortable. The narrative has a Black Mirror-ish vibe to it, and it critiques the world we are living in. Personally, it left me thinking about where we are headed as a generation. We have all watched reality shows; we have all witnessed influencers doing anything and everything to get those views on their videos, but when you view them from the perspective of Banerjee, you realize the absurdity behind everything. LSD 2 consists of three shorts and in between, you start questioning the kind of world you are living in and if the advent of AI, the internet, and other technologies can prove to be so fatal for mankind in general. It is essential to say here that not everything on the internet is evil or that not all influencers are megalomaniacs or mad about views,...

Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 Still ( Photo Credit – YouTube )

Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 was released in theatres on April 19, 2024. Directed by Dibakar Banerjee, it is a sequel to the 2010 film Love Sex Aur Dhokha. The movie is produced by Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Motion Pictures and Cult Movies. The first part featured Rajkummar Rao, Nushrratt Bharuccha, Anshuman Jha, Neha Chauhan, Ashish Sharma and Amit Sial. For the sequel, the makers had a new cast and a different topic. The film received mixed reactions from critics.

After almost two months of its release, LSD 2 is now available to stream online. If you want to know more about the movie, we have everything mentioned below.

Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 Cast

The movie stars Paritosh Tiwari, Bonita Rajpurohit, Abhinav Singh, Swastika Mukherjee, Mouni Roy, Uorfi Javed, Swaroopa Ghosh, Piyush Kumar, Rahul Raj, Tanvika Parlikar, and others. Director Dibakar Banerjee co-wrote the story with Shubham and Prateek Vats.

Mami Select: Filmed on iPhone is an initiative undertaken by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (Mami) to make short films shot on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The five filmmakers chosen for this virtuous deed were Prateek Vats, Saurav Rai, Faraz Ali, Archana Atul Phadke, and Saumyananda Sahi. These filmmakers were mentored by veteran filmmakers like Vishal Bhardwaj, Vikramaditya Motwane and Rohan Sippy. The five short films are tales of individuals who deal with the challenging lives of the marginalized, the vulnerable, the impoverished, the alienated, and the troubled. From the confines of a garment factory to the narrow alleys of a daily market in a rural town to the snow-clad locales of Kashmir to the dunes of Rajasthan to the bustling metropolis, they present vivid characters whose individual problems are no less vital and compelling. Small errors snowball into unintended and unimaginable consequences. As a result, the principal characters...

BAFTA Circles Calendar

The British Academy has confirmed the date of the 2025 BAFTA Film Awards, which will now be held on Sunday February. 16.

As per recent scheduling arrangements, the awards — arguably the biggest film awards outside the U.S. — takes place two weeks before the Oscars on March 2, 2025. Regular film festival attendees may note that the BAFTA awards will, once again, be held during the Berlinale, set to run February 13-23, with there likely to be a spike in industry professionals flying back to London on the morning of Feb. 16.

The full timeline and eligibility details for the 2025 BAFTA Film Awards will be announced in due course. Voting will take place over three rounds: longlisting, nominations and winners, by the academy’s global voting film membership which comprises more than 7,800 industry creatives.

The 2024 BAFTA Film Awards, which saw “Oppenheimer” dominate with wins for best film, director and actor, were watched...

Bhutan-set political satire ’The Monk And The Gun’ takes festival’s audience award

Sarvnik Kaur’s documentary Against The Tide has won the top prize, the Golden Gateway Award, at the Jio Mami Mumbai Film Festival.

The documentary, which world premiered at Sundance, follows two fishers and friends from Mumbai’s Koli community pursuing their livelihoods by different means.

Lockdown drama Bahadur - The Brave by Diwa Shah, which played in San Sebastian’s New Directors strand this year, won the Silver Gateway Award.

Kanu Behl’s drama Agra, which world premiered in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight this year, won the special jury award.

Sarvnik Kaur’s documentary “Against the Tide” has won the Golden Gateway Award at the Jio Mami Mumbai Film Festival. The film previously won awards at Sundance, Sydney and Seattle and best documentary at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards on the same evening as Mumbai.

Diwa Shah’s San Sebastian winner “Bahadur: The Brave” received Mumbai’s Silver Gateway Award. The festival’s Gender Sensitivity Award, for a film that challenges gender stereotypes and norms, which is decided by India’s Film Critics Guild, was won by Leesa Gazi’s “Barir Naam Shahana” (“A House Named Shahana”). The Special Jury Award went to Kanu Behl’s “Agra,” which premiered at Cannes earlier this year.

The Rashid Irani Young Critics’ Choice Award, a program created by the festival to nurture young writers on cinema, was won by Shahrukhkhan Chavada’s “Kayo Kayo Colour?” Dominic Sangma’s Locarno title “Rimdogittanga” (“Rapture”) won the Netpac Award.

After his fiction feature debut, the absurdist satire “Eeb Allay Ooo!,” Indian filmmaker Prateek Vats is readying political comedy “Chronicles of a Confession.” The film is a selection at the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Project Market.

“Eeb Allay Ooo!” won big at the Mumbai Film Festival and went on to play at the Berlinale, Sao Paolo and Valladolid among many other festivals. Written by Vidur Nauriyal and Vats, “Chronicles of a Confession” will follow a Kashmiri shawl seller whose confession to a bomb blast he didn’t commit spurs an investigation revealing truths as absurd as everyday life in Kashmir, northern India.

A few years back Vats chanced upon a news report about a young Kashmiri man walking into a police station in Mumbai and confessing to a series of bomb blasts and investigations revealed that the concerned man had nothing to do with the blasts and had...

Busan International Film Festival has announced the 30 projects selected for this year’s Asian Project Market (Apm), including new works from leading Asian filmmakers such as Japan’s Koji Fukada, Indonesia’s Makbul Mubarak and India’s Rima Das.

Fukada, whose previous films have premiered at Cannes and Venice (Love Life), will present Japan-France co-production Nagi Notes, produced by Osanai Terutaro.

Mubarak, whose Autobiography premiered at last year’s Venice before embarking on an awards haul across Asia, is bringing Watch It Burn, produced by Indonesia’s Yulia Evina Bhara, one of the producers on this year’s Cannes Critics Week winner Tiger Stripes.

Das is a Busan regular who has also had films play in Toronto and Berlin (Bulbul Can Sing). She will present Malti My Love, which the self-taught filmmaker will also produce, just as she has produced, written,...

Busan Funding Revealed

The Busan festival’s Asian Cinema Fund has announced 14 film projects to which it will give financial support. Three projects at script stage, black comedy “Chronicles of a Confession,” by Prateek Vats (India), “To Kill a Mongolian Horse” by China’s Jiang Xioaxuan and Suraj Paudel “Where the Rivers Run South” (Nepal) each receive a KRW10 million cash grant and will be invited to the 2023 edition of the festival’s Asian Project Market.

Four projects receive post-production funding and are expected to make their world premieres at Busan this year. They are “Concerning My Daughter,” by Lee Mirang, and “Lay Off” by Park Hongjun, both from Korea. They are joined by “Solids by the Seashore,” from Thailand’s Patiparn Boontarig and “The Spark,” by Indian veteran Rajesh S. Jala.

Seven feature documentary projects each receive up to KRW20 million from the Asian Network of Documentary Fund. The...

After the impressive success of the BAFTA Breakthrough India programme in 2021 and 2022, BAFTA is once again launching the scheme for a third year. Applications open today until 5 July, and the programme is open to creatives from across the film, games and television industries nationally, as well as those working in the UK and the US.

This year also marks Netflix’s third year supporting BAFTA Breakthrough in India and its fourth year in the UK and US.

BAFTA Breakthrough aims to identify and nurture emerging talent from around the world and equip them with the resources they need to develop their skills and progress in their chosen field. First launched in the UK ten years ago, BAFTA Breakthrough is one of the arts charity’s flagship talent schemes, with over 200 careers developed and accelerated to-date.

Through this initiative, BAFTA Breakthrough India will once again identify and celebrate Indian talent by...

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has named ten emerging talents from across the Indian film, gaming and television industries that will participate in the 2022 edition of its BAFTA Breakthrough India initiative supported by Netflix.

The 2022 contingent includes writer-director Ajitpal Singh; composer Alokananda Dasgupta (“Sacred Games”), writer-director Arati Kadav (“Cargo”), producer Mathivanan Rajendran (“Nirvana Inn”), writer-director Leena Manimekalai, game director Nakul Verma (“In My Shadow”), writer-director Prateek Vats (“Eeb Allay Ooo!”), cinematographer Saumyananda Sahi (“Eeb Allay Ooo!”), writer Shubham (“Eeb Allay Ooo!”) and performer Sumukhi Suresh (“Pushpavalli”).

The talents were selected by a jury consisting of BAFTA-winning composer A.R. Rahman, editor and writer Apurva Asrani, actors Anupam Kher and Ratna Pathak Shah, games producer Charu Desodt, Amazon India head Gaurav Gandhi, Netflix India content chief Monika Shergill, producers Siddharth Roy Kapur and Guneet Monga, BAFTA chair Krishnendu Majumdar, GOQii CEO Vishal Gondal and filmmaker Shonali Bose.

During the program,...

Eeb Allay Ooo! Photo: Saumyanda Sahi/NaMa Productions Welcome to this week's Stay-At-Home Seven. If you're looking for more home viewing suggestions, check out our most recent Streaming Spotlight on Swedish films.

Eeb Allay Ooo!, 1.45am Channel 4, Wednesday, June 3

There's a strong documentary feel to the framework of this satirical debut from Prateek Vats that immerses us in the world of the hapless Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj), newly arrived in Delhi but desperate to contribute to the household income of his pregnant sister (Nutan Sinha). He gets a job as a monkey-shooer (a job that genuinely exists in the real world), the only problems being that he is petrified of them and monkeys are considered sacred by the majority Hindu populace and so must not be harmed. The title of the film refers to the shouts intended to scare them off and there's a gentle humour to Anjali's attempts, while something sharper,...

Film FestivalA special package by editor Bina Paul, master classes by directors Anjali Menon and Dibakar Banerjee are included in the festival.Tnm StaffBina Paul / Photo courtesy - idsffk.inThe seventh edition of the Urban Lens Film Festival will be held online, from December 1 to 6. The international film festival that brings together filmmakers, academics and urban practitioners for conversations on cinema and the urban experience, is held in association with The Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan and the Danish Cultural Institute. The festival is curated by Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Iihs) Media Lab. In six years, it has presented films from 35 countries and 30 languages. This year, the festival will feature films from 17 countries in 18 languages. There will be a special package called ‘Works of Art are Landscapes of the Mind’, curated by renowned editor and vice chairman of the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, Bina Paul. The films from around the...

The Coalition of South Asian Film Festivals will kick off Oct. 3 with Baba Azmi’s “Mee Raqsam” (I Dance) and close with Prateek Vats’ “Eeb Allay Ooo!” on Oct. 17. The centerpiece film will be Shirish Gurung’s “Lato Kosero” from Nepal. Azmi’s sister the veteran Hindi actress Shabana will present his film.

In-between more than 20 films and shorts will play at the fest, which will also host virtual programs including Q&As with talent and creatives. The films will be streamed on Vimeo’s Ott platform, while the Q&As can be seen on-demand.

The coalition, which comprises South Asian fests from Seattle; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Mississauga/Toronto; Maryland; Montreal; and Vancouver, will also unspool blocks of shorts covering themes of interest to the South Asian diaspora, the Lgbtqi community, racism and love and relationships. Unable to host a festival on the ground due to the coronavirus, CoSaff...

After its premiere at this year’s Berlinale, the Indian social drama “Eeb Allay Ooo!” by Prateek Vats was screened in the program of the We Are One film festival. The movie was presented by the Mumbai Film Festival.

The film addresses topics such as guest workers and family affiliation and gives an interesting insight into Indian customs, professional hierarchies and the country’s legal system.

Anjani moves to New Delhi to live with his sister to support her and earn money. But finding a job turns out to be rather difficult and so he is happy when his brother-in-law gets him a job as a civil servant. But this is more exhausting than expected. Monkeys have made themselves comfortable in the city. They are regarded as half gods and must not be hurt. But around the government building they are not wanted. That’s why there are the monkey expellers.

Tribeca and Youtube have announced their full roster of titles for their unprecedented festival for these unprecedented times — We Are One: A Global Film Festival. In a unifying spirit reminiscent of Tribeca’s own post-9/11 beginnings, the festival flexes some curatorial practice by the biggest muscles on the market — including Cannes, Venice, Berlinale, and Annecy. We’ve taken the liberty to parse out their Asian titles for your viewing pleasure below. With a slate of festival features and star-studded panels, the festival will stream some of the best of what the circuit has to offer.

We Are One can be found (for free!) on youtube.com/weareone. The festival will run from May 29 to June 7.

Feature Films

“Amreeka”

Amreeka

When a Palestinian single mom and her teenage son immigrate to small-town Illinois, their dreams of an exciting future clash with the racism they encounter there in this dramedic Fipresci prizewinner.

Tribeca Enterprises and YouTube announced today the programming slate for We Are One: A Global Film Festival, which will feature over 100 films co-curated by 21 prolific festivals, hailing from 35 countries.

The 10-day digital event will give audiences an opportunity to experience different cultures

through an artistic lens – each official selection was handpicked for inclusion to highlight the singularities of each participating festival, while also providing a voice to filmmakers on a global stage. Many of these titles will have significant debuts at the festival, with programming consisting of over 100 films, including 13 world premieres, 31 online premieres, and five international online premieres.

Highlights from the festival include the world premiere of ‘Iron Hammer’, Joan Chen’s documentary about legendary Chinese Olympic volleyball star Jenny Lang Ping, and ‘Eeb Allay Ooo!’, a satire from director Prateek Vats about the professional “monkey repellers” in New Delhi, which won the Golden Gateway honour at last year’s Mumbai Film Festival,...

Event to run on YouTube from May 29 to June 7 and will screen 31 features and 72 shorts.

Thirty-one features will screen at We Are One: A Global Film Festival, the free event set to kick off this week on YouTube with programming curated by more than 21 A-list festivals including Cannes, Toronto, Venice, Berlin, London and Tribeca.

The festival is set to run from May 29 to June 7 and will screen new and classic films.

The programme, announced on Tuesday (May 26) by Tribeca Enterprises and YouTube, includes Venice 2018 selection Beautiful Things by Giorgio Ferrero, and Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy (2013) by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit,...

Are animals more precious than humans? For his debut feature, Eeb Allay Ooo!, Prateek Vats lets the audience decide what to make of the real-life monkey menace that has long plagued the high-security areas around government buildings including the parliament in India’s capital, New Delhi.

Against the backdrop of this surreal satirical premise, the story revolves around Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj), a migrant from rural India who can’t find employment in the city and ends up working for a monkey repeller squad (think Ghostbusters for monkeys) under government contract.

"It’s a story about the times we live in ...

Are animals more precious than humanr his debut feature, Eeb Allay Ooo!, Prateek Vats lets the audience decide what to make of the real-life monkey menace that has long plagued the high-security areas around government buildings including the Parliament in India’s capital, New Delhi.

Against the backdrop of this surreal satirical premise, the story revolves around Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj), a migrant from rural India who can’t find employment in the city and ends up working for a monkey repeller squad (think Ghostbusters for monkeys) under government contract.

"It’s a story about the times we live in ...

Saudi Arabia’s nascent Red Sea International Film festival has unveiled its inaugural lineup featuring the Middle East premiere of Harvey Weinstein-inspired workplace abuse drama “The Assistant” amid a fresh mix of feature films and docs from Europe, the U.S., Asia, and Africa launching in the region on top of a robust representation of Arab films.

Significantly, the opener will be “The Book of Sun” by debuting Saudi directorial duo Faris and Suhaib Godus, about a teenager named Husam who, prompted by the growing phenomenon of Saudi YouTube content, embarks with a group of geeks on a mission to make a no-budget horror pic. Production of this film was supported by the fest.

Oliver Stone will preside over the competition jury.

Red Sea festival chief Mahmoud Sabbagh in a statement called “Book of Sun” “a testament to the passionate community of pioneering filmmakers who have inspired and drive Saudi cinema culture.

Matteo Garrone to present ‘Pinocchio’ as the first Berlinale Special Gala.

The Berlinale has revealed the first films set to be screened at the 70th edition of the festival.

They include the live-action adaptation of Pinocchio, from Italian director Matteo Garrone, which is the first Berlinale Special Gala to be announced – a category that replaces ‘out of competition’. It will mark the international premiere of the film, starring Roberto Benigni, which is released in Italy this weekend.

Scroll down for full list of titles

The first 18 films selected for the Panorama strand have also been named, including 11 world premieres.

Among...

Matteo Garrone to present ‘Pinocchio’ as the first Berlinale Special Gala.

The Berlinale has revealed the first films set to be screened at the 70th edition of the festival.

They include the live-action adaptation of Pinocchio, from Italian director Matteo Garrone, which is the first Berlinale Special Gala to be announced – a category that replaces ‘out of competition’. It will mark the international premiere of the film, starring Roberto Benigni, which is released in Italy this weekend.

Scroll down for full list of titles

The first 18 films selected for the Panorama strand have also been named, including 11 world premieres.

Among...

Matteo Garrone’s “Pinocchio,” starring Roberto Benigni, will have its international premiere at the 70th Berlin Film Festival the event announced Tuesday as new artistic director Carlo Chatrian unveiled the first titles for his debut edition.

“Pinocchio” will play as part of the Berlinale Special Gala section, which replaces the Out of Competition category.

Chatrian, who co-heads the Berlinale with executive director Mariette Rissenbeek, said: “Garrone succeeds in re-telling the well-known story with his very own world of images. Although he is faithful to Carlo Collodi’s ideas, he has nevertheless created a very personal Pinocchio that is much more cheerful than we’ve experienced before.”

The first films selected for the Panorama, Perspektive Deutsches Kino, Generation and Forum Expanded sections were also announced (links attached).

Among other titles, Michael Stütz, the new head of the Panorama section, has picked films by Faraz Shariat (“No Hard Feelings”), Uisenma Borchu (“Black...

Debut director Prateek Vats’ “Eeb Allay Ooo!”, a satirical social commentary revolving around a monkey wrangler in New Delhi, won three awards at the 21st edition of the Mumbai Film Festival, which concluded Thursday.

The film won the Golden Gateway first prize in the festival’s India Gold competition, the best actor award for Shardul Bhardwaj, and the Young Critics’ Choice award. It had its world premiere at the Pingyao festival earlier this month in China.

Gitanjali Rao’s “Bombay Rose,” a Mumbai-set animated romance, which has played in Toronto, Venice, Busan and London, won the Silver Gateway award. It shared the inaugural Manish Acharya award for new voices in Indian cinema with first-time director Achal Mishra’s family drama, “Gamak Ghar.”

Another debut feature, Kislay’s “Aise Hi,” a portrait of an elderly woman’s emancipation, won best actress for Mohini Sharma and the Film Critics Guild award. The...

In India, monkeys may recall the great Hindu monkey god Hanuman, and they may be protected under wildlife laws, but when they infest downtown New Delhi, they have to be dealt with. The real-life solution has been to have human guards mimic the sounds made by their natural enemies, the langurs, to scare them away from the main buildings of Indian democracy. Prateek Vats’ first fiction feature Eeb Allay Ooo! takes the ironies one step further in a farcical story that is more thought-provoking than funny. Given the situation’s inherent comedy is kept in the background, the pic isn’t ...

In India, monkeys may recall the great Hindu monkey god Hanuman, and they may be protected under wildlife laws, but when they infest downtown New Delhi, they have to be dealt with. The real-life solution has been to have human guards mimic the sounds made by their natural enemies, the langurs, to scare them away from the main buildings of Indian democracy. Prateek Vats’ first fiction feature Eeb Allay Ooo! takes the ironies one step further in a farcical story that is more thought-provoking than funny. Given the situation’s inherent comedy is kept in the background, the pic isn’t ...

Crouching Tigers includes titles such as Cesar Diaz’ Our Mothers and Anthony Chen’s Wet Season.

Pingyao International Film Festival (Pyiff) has unveiled the bulk of its programme for this year’s edition, including the world premiere of Indian filmmaker Tushar Hiranandani’s sports drama Bull’s Eye, which will screen as a special presentation on Pingyao Night.

Hong Kong filmmaker Jacob Cheung’s The Opera House, starring Mason Lee and Ouyang Nana, will also receive its world premiere at Pyiff as the closing film.

So far the festival, founded by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke with Marco Mueller as artistic director,...

Bhaskar Hazarika’s “Ravening” (“Aamis”) won the Facebook award for the project with the most buzz at the Film Bazaar Recommends strand at the annual Film Bazaar in Goa, India. The award is calculated on audience votes and number of visits to the film at the Bazaar’s viewing room. The project gets $10,000 worth of advertising on Facebook.

“Aamis” previously featured in the 2017 Asian Project Market at Busan. Hazarika’s debut “The River of Fables” had considerable festival play in 2015, including Busan, London and Gothenburg.

Prateek Vats’ “Eeb Allay Ooo!” won the Facebook award for best film at the Bazaar’s work in progress lab. The lab also features awards from Prasad Labs that offers free digital intermediate process for winning films, free mastering of Dci compliant DCPs from Moviebuff, and $3000 worth of trailer promotion in 300 Qube cinemas. Saurav Rai’s “Nimtoh” (“Invitation”) and Jadab Mahanta’s “Rukuni Koina” (“The Holy Bride”) won these awards.

Strange Old Lady, Ravening and Eeb Allay Ooo! also picks up awards from Prasad, Qube and Facebook.

Saurav Rai’s Invitation and Jadab Mahanta’s The Holy Bride were both presented with Prasad Post-Production & Moviebuff Appreciation Awards in the Works-in-Progress Lab at this year’s edition of Film Bazaar.

Invitation (Nimtoh), a Nepalese-language drama, tells the story of a ten-year-old village boy who upsets his grandmother by trying to get invited to a wedding within a wealthy family. Assamese-language The Holy Bride (Rukuni Koina) revolves around a girl who suffers social stigma due to a disease that prevents her from entering puberty.