Udita Jhunjhunwala

Sumo Didi opens at the Taiwan Open Sumo Live, where Hetal Dave (Shriyam Bhagnani) makes history as the first Indian woman to compete in the tournament. It then rewinds nine months to Kolkata, where Hetal—who will become India’s first professional female sumo wrestler—is struggling after years of being judged for her body. She’s humiliated at school for her weight issues, and her mother, Sudha (Anubha Fatehpuriya), worries that she won’t find a husband. Encouraged by her father, Rajendra Dave (Nitesh Pandey), Hetal learns judo and enters competitions. But she is also acutely aware of the judgments she encounters, and begins to doubt herself. Her friend Akshat (Chaitanya Sharma), a physiotherapist, helps her see the difference between the person she is and the person the world expects her to be. He asks her to consider who she really is: someone who conforms to the way the world sees her, or an individual who can look beyond stereotypes.

Thomas Miranda (Hridansh Parekh) has two pressing concerns: where do babies come from, and how can he get a baby brother? When he was six, he wanted a zoo; now at seven, he is convinced that he needs a sibling. His attempt to find answers lead him to a priest, his kindly neighbour Mrs Braganza (Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal) and conversations with his two friends: Nigel, who has an insatiable appetite, and Murthy, a science enthusiast. Thomas’s parents Desmond (Gulshan Devaiah) and Jessie (Rasika Dugal) run a bakery, but business is slow. Jessie teaches piano, but dwindling interest among children in learning music threatens her livelihood. Desmond and Jessie’s disagreements are shaped by everyday pressures, though Thomas, naturally, sees things in much simpler terms.

Translating a video game into a feature film requires more than recreating its characters and signature moves. In Street Fighter, the appeal of the arcade game lies in its colourful fighters, distinctive techniques and the immediacy of one-on-one combat. A film, however, needs to give these characters a reason to occupy the same space beyond the prospect of a fight. The latest adaptation of Capcom’s video-game franchise understands the spectacle better than the storytelling. Directed by Kitao Sakurai, this is the third live-action feature film based on Capcom’s video-game series, which began in 1987 and became a landmark in the fighting-game genre with Street Fighter II in 1991. Sakurai’s film draws on this legacy, though familiarity with the game does not necessarily translate into an interest in the lives of its characters.

There is something almost inevitable about Drishyam: The Conclusion arriving in theatres on 2 October. The date has been woven so deeply into the mythology of Vijay Salgaonkar and his family it seems to belong, at least partly, to this fictional alibi. In the third and final chapter of Abhishek Pathak’s Hindi-language franchise, the familiar date returns, as does the question that has followed Vijay (Ajay Devgn) since 2015: can he stay one step ahead of the law? Six months after the events of the second film, Meera Deshmukh (Tabu) and her husband Mahesh (Rajat Kapoor) are still living with the loss of their son, Sam. The case of his death, however, has been closed. The Salgaonkar family has moved on, but Meera has not. Her need for justice has been replaced by a desire for revenge. When a senior police officer reveals that new evidence has surfaced, the fragile truce ruptures. The case is reopened, and Vijay once again finds himself being hunted.

Balaji Mohan’s six-episode Tamil series on Netflix sets up a wager between chemistry and compatibility. What makes two people fall in love: chemistry or compatibility? #Love gives the familiar romantic question a contemporary spin through dating apps, algorithms and start-up culture. The result is breezy viewing that raises potentially interesting questions about how we connect. Written by Nirmal Williams along with Sharada Subramanian and Shweta Chakravarty, the series revolves around two competing dating apps. Tara (Aishwarya Lekshmi), the self-made founder of Found, believes that relationships are built on compatibility. Matthew (Arjun Das), a wealthy investor and adventure junkie, backs Find My Bae, which puts chemistry first.

There are movies that make you jump out of your seat, and then there are movies that make you sit very still, your shoulders slowly tightening, waiting for something terrible to happen. Heart of the Beast belongs to the latter category. Brad Pitt leads this affecting survival drama in which the bond between a retired soldier and his service dog becomes the heart of the story. Director David Ayer’s film is remarkably spare. There is very little dialogue, few characters and, for long stretches, just Brad Pitt and Odin, a German Shepherd, navigating an unforgiving wilderness. Yet the film rarely feels empty. Its silences become part of the storytelling, allowing the landscape, the sounds of the forest, Jared Michael Fry’s evocative score and the two central performances to carry the weight.

Prime Video’s new Hindi original film centres on Shyamili ‘Shy’ Das (Aarushi Bajaj), a college student who has her entire life mapped out. Shy has absorbed the rules of The Perfect Woman, a book that promises to show women how to get life right. Plan A revolves around Shy’s future with boyfriend Mayank (Piyush Khati), the heir to a business empire, and an imagined version of herself that bears little resemblance to her actual existence. Shy has no Plan B.

Mirzapur: The Movie has the peculiar challenge of starting in the middle of a story, a set of relationships and a world that its audience already knows intimately. There are no introductions, no explanations, no time wasted telling us who these people are, what they want and what they mean to each other. They arrive on the big screen with histories, grudges, loyalties and complicated equations that audiences have watched unfold over three seasons of Mirzapur. During the movie’s 197-minute running time, writer Puneet Krishna’s screenplay begins to introduce a new plot and new players, and what initially seems like an elaborate exercise in fan service gradually finds a life of its own.