Saibal Chatterjee

Jailers, convicts and undertrials populate Black Warrant, a seven-episode Netflix series created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh and produced under the banner of Applause Entertainment. Barring occasional detours beyond its prison setting, the show remains firmly focussed on an upright, unassuming jailer navigating a corrupt, insensitive system. It provides a sprawling overview of Delhi’s understaffed and overcrowded Tihar Jail of the 1980s from the perspective of a real-life prison superintendent. The insider’s take sets the series apart from average yarns about cops and crooks, crime and punishment. Black Warrant is no yarn. Rooted in reality, it portrays the intense struggles of a hero who is anything but a boilerplate man of action. He isn’t a cocky, hyper-masculine, strapping crusader out to flatten everything in his path.

Aparna Sen, movie star, ace filmmaker, successful magazine editor and active civil society leader, has had an incredibly eventful and diverse career. A documentary chronicling her life and times was long overdue. But that certainly isn’t the only reason why Suman Ghosh’s Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen, should be essential viewing. Straddling a wide gamut - from the personal and professional to the political and public - and employing a wide range of interviews and reminiscences of notable contemporaries, Parama: A Journey with Aparna Sen throws light on an accomplished filmmaker, her significant body of work and the complexities of the times that she lives and works in. Suman Ghosh, who cast Aparna Sen alongside Soumitra Chatterjee in Basu Poribar (2018), has produced a deft 81-minute cinematic document that encapsulates the varied facets of one of India’s foremost filmmakers. The female gaze and the primacy of films that put women at their centre are inevitably mentioned, but Ghosh, taking a cue from the subject’s stand on the matter, does not unduly foreground Sen’s gender.

A brilliant and sensitive schoolgirl in love with a classmate is watched, monitored and scrutinised incessantly as she seeks to break free from familial and societal shackles in Girls Will Be Girls, writer-director Shuchi Talati’s self-assured, award-winning narrative feature debut now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The exquisitely crafted and insightful coming-of-age drama, an Indo-French co-production that bagged two awards at the Sundance Film Festival this year, is buoyed by impeccable writing and a couple of consummate performances by debutante Preeti Panigrahi and the seasoned Kani Kusruti.

Two early scenes in Despatch provide a foretaste of the complexities that are about to assail the life of crime reporter Joy Bag (Manoj Bajpayee). In the first, he returns home from a long day at work to find wife Shweta (Shahana Goswami) merrily partying with friends. One of the guests, drunk to the gills, tries to forcibly feed him a pizza. Joy snaps and storms out of the house.

The Siddis, a community unrepresented in Indian cinema, is under the spotlight in Rhythm of Dammam, an exceptionally evocative, visually arresting film written and directed by Kerala-born, New York-based Jayan Cherian. The film premiered this week at the 55th International Film Festival of India in Goa. It is now headed to the International Competition line-up of the upcoming 29th International Film Festival of Kerala.

Think up a character. Name him Sikandar. He may or may not master of his destiny. Pit the clean-cut guy against a dogged lawman determined to control the man’s muqaddar. Lo and behold, you have a handy title that harks back to a 1978 Amitabh Bachchan megahit with which this Netflix film has nothing to do.

The intimation of death signals the beginning of a new life in the here and now for Arjun Sen, the voluble and showy adman-protagonist of Shoojit Sircar’s I Want to Talk. It inevitably causes confusion and agony but strengthens his resolve to fight while altering his perspective on existence and mortality. Written by Ritesh Shah and based on a real-life Indian-American professional, Arjun produces adverts to encourage people to buy products they might or might not need. His joys rest on the sterling success he has in pulling off his acts of persuasion.

A brisk opening that holds some promise, a meandering middle that scuttles much of the early potential, and an overly rushed climax make Greedy People a mixed bag – an action comedy that never kicks into top gear despite all the scampering that it does in search of a sweep spot. Greedy People, premiering in India exclusively on Lionsgate Play and available in English and Hindi, is frequently enlivened by dashes of deadpan humour. With Joseph Gordon-Levitt imparting immense charm and chutzpah to his flamboyant cop and punchlines flying thick and fast between him and his partner in ‘crime’, the film has its share of passably bright moments.