Anuj Kumar

After weeks of shrill, strident films, The Great Shamshuddin Family offers the warmth of a quilt and the taste of ginger tea in a Delhi winter. Nearly 15 years after Peepli Live, Anusha Rizvi returns with a day-long glimpse into the life of a modern Indian Muslim family that is achingly human, steadfastly hopeful, and consistently humorous. Carrying tensions arising from interfaith relationships and generational grievances within its layers, the film gradually builds the tenuous relationship between the home and the world. From the passive aggression of liberals, the youthful presumptions, the manipulation of conservative but well-meaning elders, to the bitterness, the casual communal innuendos, and prejudices that we see around us, the film brings out the foreboding and the fears of social violence in our subconscious mind without pointing fingers.

In the last few years, Aditya Dhar has emerged as a dhurandhar, an expert who can soft pedal nationalist propaganda with aesthetic execution. After Uri and Article 370, here he turns a potential OTT series into a 212-minute unyielding character study of ‘enemies’. Addressed to an audience who lost faith in ‘aman in aasha’ with the neighbour after the Kandhar hijack and the Parliament attack of 2001, the film is mounted like a tribute to the exploits of Ajay Sanyal (R Madhavan), who seems to be based on National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. While the disclaimer calls it a fictional exercise, the similarities with real-life characters seem more than coincidental.

Bollywood is in love all over again. After Mohit Suri’s Saiyaara, Aanand L Rai, another master of the poetic portrayal of passion and pain, returns with a gripping interrogation of love’s destructive underbelly, set in a social context. Connected to Raanjhanaa(2013) by an umbilical cord, Tere Ishk Mein talks of the magic of love that is lost in modern life’s logic, which entices us to trade emotions. In Rai’s universe, love is both poison and panacea, and once again, he has taken up a risky subject — the transformative power of romance.

A middle-class intelligence officer juggling high-stakes national security threats with his chaotic family life. When The Family Man sauntered into our living rooms in 2019, it offered a fresh take on the spy genre, one that eschewed existing clichés. It raised the bar for Indian OTT thrillers, with Manoj Bajpayee’s nuanced performance anchoring the narrative.

Much like our political leadership, Bollywood largely remains silent on our battles and skirmishes with our northern neighbour. This week is a glorious exception, as director Razneesh Razy Ghai brings a tale of valour from the Chinese front as he makes us relive the battle of Rezang La, where 120 Indian bravehearts from the plains thwarted the dragon’s designs on Chushul Airfield to occupy the entire Ladakh during the Sino-Indian war on November 21, 1962.

There is no shot of Taj Mahal in Kanu Behl’s Agra. There are no sprawling gardens that dot the city of monuments. Instead, the fearless chronicler of our society’s hidden fractures and fault lines focuses on the cramped spaces, repressed desires, and the incommodious mindscapes in the mofussil town that the city holds beneath its touristy topsoil. It is the Agra that Sahir Ludhianvi referred to in his critique of the Taj Mahal when he said that the monument symbolised the exploitation of the poor by the elite. Behl is more matter-of-fact, but there is a distinctive rhythm to his storytelling. It is like the movement of a worm under the skin that is difficult to ignore or resolve.

In 2019, when De De Pyaar De hit the screens, the unapologetic take on unconventional love worked because of being emotionally honest without being melodramatic. Six years later, director Anshul Sharma returns with a cheeky sequel, in the middle of the wedding season, that is again bold in idea and joyful in spirit. Filled with a heavy dose of family chaos and generational clash, it follows Ashish Mehra (Ajay Devgn), the middle-aged divorcee in love with the much younger Ayesha (Rakul Preet Singh). Their spirited romance faces another litmus test as this time Ayesha takes Ashish home to introduce him to her self-proclaimed progressive Punjabi family.

Staying honest to its gritty and grounded base, the third season of the acclaimed police procedural tackles the interstate human trafficking of young girls and women. Shefali Shah returns as the unflinching police officer Vartika Chaturvedi, who has now been promoted to DIG but is on a ‘punishment’ posting in the North East. Inspired by the Baby Falak case of 2012, as the news of a battered infant left in the trauma centre of AIIMS assumes national importance, Madam Sir hits the ground running. She is joined by her reliable team, led by Neeti Singh (Rasika Dugal) and Bhupendra (Rajesh Tailang).