Last Man in Tower
Drama (Hindi)
Masterji is a retired schoolteacher whose refusal to go along with those around him places him in direct conflict with his own community. His act of quiet resistance ripples outward, throwing into relief the choices and compromises of neighbors – (more…)
The Revolutionaries
Drama (Hindi)
The Revolutionaries narrates the inspiring tale of brave young Indian freedom fighters who fought for ending British Raj with their unwavering spirit and ideology. (more…)
Guild Reviews by Film
Last Man in Tower
Drama (Hindi)
Masterji is a retired schoolteacher whose refusal to go along with those around him places him in direct conflict with his own community. His act of quiet resistance ripples outward, throwing into relief the choices and compromises of neighbors – including Mrs. Puri – as an offer of change tests what each of them is willing to hold on to.
Cast:
Manoj Bajpayee, Divya Dutta, Boman Irani, Sukant Goel, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Ujjwal Chopra, Swaroopa Ghosh, Uday Chandra, Madhuri Bhatia, Shrikant Yadav
Director:
Ben Rekhi
Mon, September 14 2026
Sat, September 12 2026
Directed by Ben Rekhi, Last Man in Tower is an adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s novel of the same name. The story revolves around a decrepit residential building in Mumbai and its residents, and how the lure of a better future changes ties when a builder arrives with an offer to acquire and reconstruct the property.
Directed by Ben Rekhi, Last Man in Tower is a perfectly pleasant adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s novel of the same name. But therein lies the problem; it is well-behaved when it should have been transgressive. At its core, this is a cautionary tale about the decaying morality of the Indian middle class, a satire about our collective lack of social trust. But filtered through Rekhi’s lens, the movie comes across as an ode to the undying spirit of Mumbaikars. The story revolves around a decrepit residential building in Vakola, Mumbai, an almost fantastical vessel where men and women of all ages, sexes, and social classes live in relative harmony. The building can be seen as a metaphor for India; a society we imagine existed before it was shredded to pieces by populist politicians. At its (moral) centre is a retired teacher affectionately known by everyone as ‘Masterji’. He’s played by Manoj Bajpayee in a terrific central performance that occasionally reveals the underlying rage that should have been more palpable in the film itself.
Fri, September 11 2026
Adapting Aravind Adiga’s acclaimed novel, Ben Rekhi builds a gripping moral battleground where a community chooses redevelopment to compromise its own foundation.
At the heart of Last Man in Tower lies Vishram Cooperative Housing Society, a decaying, close-knit enclave of middle-class Mumbai families. Their world is upended when a ruthless real estate tycoon, Dharmen Shah (Boman Irani), offers them a life-changing financial windfall to buy out the building for luxury redevelopment. The catch is that the payout is all or nothing, contingent on a unanimous vote. While his cash-strapped neighbours eagerly scramble for a ticket into the modern world, Yogesh Mishra (Manoj Bajpayee), a retired schoolteacher known as Masterji, stubbornly refuses to sign away the home that holds the memories of his deceased wife. What begins as a disagreement quickly degenerates into a psychological social pressure cooker, as the neighborhood’s collective desperation, led by the chirpy Sangeeta Puri (Divya Dutta), turns into targeted malice against the lone dissenter.
Ghamasaan
Thriller, Action (Hindi)
A cat-and-mouse tale set in the Hindi heartland, where male friendships and rivalries unveil homoerotic tensions. Men on both sides of the law traverse arid lands, creating a sense of place where unexplored histories reside.
Cast:
Pratik Gandhi, Arshad Warsi, Ishita Dutta, Rajpal Yadav, Jatin Goswami, Deepraj Rana, Pankaj Saraswat, Anurag Thakur, Paritosh Sand, Kumar Kanchan Ghosh
Director:
Tigmanshu Dhulia
Writer:
Ram Yash Singh, Piyush Singh
Sun, September 13 2026
मध्य भारत के डकैतों की बात होती है तो चंबल नदी के आसपास के बीहड़ वाले डाकू (ओह सॉरी, बीहड़ में बागी होत हैं, डकैत होत हैं पार्लामैंट में) ही याद आते हैं। यही कारण है कि किसी ज़माने में कुख्यात रहे डकैत ददुआ यानी शिव कुमार पटेल को भी चंबल से जोड़ लिया जाता है जबकि उसका इलाका उत्तर प्रदेश के चित्रकूट में माणिकपुर के आसपास का पाठा (पठारी) क्षेत्र था। कभी बीहड़ की फूलन देवी पर बनी कमाल की फिल्म ‘बैंडिट क्वीन’ से जुड़े रहे और वहीं के पान सिंह तोमर पर ‘पान सिंह तोमर’ नाम से एक उम्दा फिल्म दे चुके फिल्मकार तिग्मांशु धूलिया अब पाठा के ददुआ पर यह फिल्म ‘घमासान’ (Ghamasaan) लेकर आए हैं। मगर क्या यह फिल्म उन दो फिल्मों की तरह शानदार बन पाई है? आइए देखते हैं।
Sun, September 13 2026
Set in the Hindi heartland, Bundelkhand, Ghamasaan delves into the conflict between a powerful dacoit named Maharaj (Arshad Warsi) and a fearless officer, Aditya Singh (Pratik Gandhi). As Aditya tries to dismantle Maharaj’s reign, he needs to rise above deep corruption, taking stock of power struggles and the thin line between the law and the outlaws. Pratik Gandhi is decent as an approachable, earnest cop and gives it relatability. And, after a while, Arshad Warsi sheds his comedy image and brings an earthy flamboyance to a ruthless, proactive dacoit. Rajpal Yadav bags a unique role, and among the supporting cast, Deepraj Rana, Jatin Goswami and Ishita Dutta make a mark.
Fri, September 11 2026
Arshad Warsi as Maharaj didn’t make me believe all the way that he could be a cruel man with zero compassion. And there’s also Rajpal Yadav, in a striking supporting role, which leaves a mark.
The arena is Bundelkhand, not Chambal, but Timanshu Dhulia knows his terrain. And that familiarity makes Ghamasaan stand out from the series of films shot on locations created on sets, their artifice seeping into the story-telling: the best part of this conflict between cops-and-robbers is the authenticity of the place, and the people. Maharaj (Arshad Warsi) is Bundelkhand’s Bandit King, as opposed to Phoolan, Chambal’s Bandit Queen (in which Dhulia was casting director) , as well as Paan Singh Tomar (which Dhulia directed, turning it into one of his, and lead Irrfan’s, best collaborations) from the same area who famously gave us that line about ‘baaghis’ and ‘dakaaits’.
Panchanama
Crime, Mystery (Telugu)
Police officer Jai Ram refuses to accept his brother Aadi's death as an accident. His investigation leads him to reopen other suspicious death cases involving Aadi, Praveen and Joseph, eventually uncovering a much larger conspiracy connected to a medical syndicate.
Cast:
Bharath Srinivasan, Shivaji Raja, Medha Reddy, Charan Babu, V. S. Roopa Lakshmi
Director:
Mohan Srivatsa
Sun, September 13 2026
Cop Jai Ram’s life takes a drastic turn when his younger brother dies under mysterious circumstances. The local authorities and the officials quickly dismiss the tragedy as a mere accident. Refusing to buy it, he kickstarts an investigation to uncover what truly happened. Bharath fits the part of a hardened cop with a past and has the right composure and body language expected of a protagonist in a tight investigative thriller. Medha Reddy is decent in a role with limited scope. The show is particularly noteworthy for Roopa Lakshmi, who gets to do something substantial beyond her goody/emotional mother roles. Sivaji Raja does what’s expected of him, with no surprises there.
The Revolutionaries
Drama (Hindi)
The Revolutionaries narrates the inspiring tale of brave young Indian freedom fighters who fought for ending British Raj with their unwavering spirit and ideology.
Cast:
Bhuvan Bam, Pratibha Ranta, Rohit Saraf, Gurfateh Pirzada, Jason Shah, Paoli Dam, Prosenjit Bhattacharya, Pallavi Chatterjee
Director:
Nikkhil Advani
Writer:
Sanyukta Shaikh Chawla, Akshita Wadhwana
Sat, September 12 2026
The Revolutionaries is a vivid document of the lesser-known armed resistance of India’s independence movement. Set in the early 20th century, it tells the stories of young, fearless freedom fighters, including Rash Behari Bose, Sachindranath Sanyal, and Bagha Jatin, as they risk everything to challenge the might of the British Empire. The series brings together several exciting talents that have made use of OTT as a talent showcase, including Bhuvan Bam, Rohit Saraf, Pratibha Ranta and Gurfateh Pirzada. Yet, they seem overwhelmed by the prospect of carrying the density of the theme. Bhuvan, Rohit and Pratibha get to shine in flashes, though nothing consistent enough to make it a poignant performance. Jason Shah, as General Dyer, is hardly intimidating.
Fri, September 11 2026
Fri, September 11 2026
Nikkhil Advani earlier floored us with ‘Freedom At Midnight’, which recounted the years that led to India’s freedom struggle
“Hum se pehle bhi kranti, hamare baad bhi kranti…” Yet many of us are not fully clued into the tale of armed resistance and revolutionaries who fought for the freedom of our country, not always successfully, but never in vain. Creator-writer Nikkhil Advani, who floored us with ‘Freedom At Midnight’, recounting the years that led to India’s freedom struggle in many sterling ways, is back again. This time, he digs further back into history — early 20th century. The heroes of his earlier series — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel — are household names. But Rash Behari Bose, Jatindranath Mukherjee aka Bagha Jatin and Sachindranath Sanyal urf Sachin are at best names which ring a bell, but only a few among us fully know or understand their tales of valour.
Fall 2: Deadpoint
Thriller (English)
On a perilous climb across Thailand's Mount Kwan, two climbers become trapped thousands of feet above the ground, where vertigo-inducing heights, sheer exposure, and impossible odds turn every moment into a fight for survival.
Cast:
Harriet Slater, Arsema Thomas, Tom Brittney, Virginia Gardner, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Korakod Yensuk, Jordan Coleman, Maryna Bennett, Noen Perez, Nattapon Sukphiam
Director:
Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig
Writer:
Scott Mann, Jonathan Frank
Sat, September 12 2026
Fall 2 Deadpoint does its job of inducing altitude terrors pretty efficiently. The writers of Fall are also associated with its sequel, and they do take their job seriously.
When a regular-Joe film is titled just Fall, you can be pretty sure it will be about a rise. When it is followed by a Fall 2, you can swear by it. The first Fall released to decent success in 2022, and achieved some bigger highs via social media reels. In that, two best friends climbed up a desolate TV tower to bury their grief, and encounter heartbreak and vultures. Fall 2 substitutes the tower for a fictional Mount Kwan in Thailand, but can’t resist the grief, betrayal or vultures still, with an over-the-hilltop ending that suggests our survivor is headed for Fall 3.
Sat, September 12 2026
Sequel to 2022 original, Fall 2 is too grim for its own good. The film appears to believe that it is a meditation on grief and an inspiring fable about emotional emancipation, without actually tackling either idea with any depth.
Released in 2022, Fall stood out as an uncommonly well-made survival thriller — it had a killer premise, excellent performances and surprising emotional depth. The genre has only become more popular in the years since. This year alone, we’ve seen the Netflix films Apex and The Last House and the Prime Video title The Devil’s Mouth. None of them were any good, although Apex featured a memorably unhinged performance by Taron Egerton. This week’s Fall 2: Deadpoint most definitely comes up short of its predecessor, but more disappointingly, it can’t quite match the camp qualities of this year’s three other survival thrillers either.
Life of Jorge Luis Borges
Documentary (Spanish)
A biography of Jorge Luis Borges working from an exhaustive review of the papers he left, the books he read, the places he went to. And with this, an attempt to decipher a very peculiar life: someone who lived like a hidden, underground warrior, whose cause was literature, literature conceived as a kingdom and as a landscape. If Cold War spies fought from their desks or from an uninhabited house to defend their half of the world, Borges strove from a library to elevate and broaden the territories of his own tribe: the people for whom the most important part of the universe is books, plots and words. This film is devoted to that secret pilgrim (to borrow from Le Carré, the king of all spies).
Cast:
Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Montequín, Nicolás Helft, Laura Paredes, Milva Leonardi, Pablo Dacal
Director:
Mariano Llinás
Fri, September 11 2026
Venice Film Festival 2026 | The ultimate vagrants of contemporary cinema, Argentina’s El Pampero collective has produced another rambling, nearly six-hour adventure between life, fiction, fantasy and charming investigation.
Pioneering Argentine filmmaker Mariano Llinás is the truest inheritor of the Borgesian tradition with a vision of cinema that trumps settled notions. There are no limits or a stiffening of what cinema can be allowed to do. Llinás co-founded Argentina’s, a radical El Pampero Cine collective, a group that includes the other great filmmaker of our times, Laura Citarella. In his latest massive undertaking, Life of Jorge Luis Borges, Llinás sculpts a new form of the creative biography. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival in the Open – Non-Fiction section, this nearly six-hour saga flirts with the tether of creative possibility. An extensive foray into the life, work and politics of Jorges Luis Borges, who saw literature as a kingdom and books the only nation to believe in, the film achieves its mammoth scale through the smallest, most minute interventions. Llinás has no interest in a straightforward chronicle, a regular documentary’s beats. His probing builds through interruptions and flickering curiosities, stretching as far from the linear and conventional as possible.
The Colour of the Sun
Drama (Japanese)
During summer break on Okinawa's main island, Kamei and his friends face uncertain futures, until they meet Colin, a teenager from the American base in Naha, and everything changes.
Cast:
Naoto Shimajiri, West Mulholland, Ichiro Andre Castro
Director:
Xavier Tera
Writer:
Xavier Tera
Fri, September 11 2026
Venice Film Festival 2026| Towering over the Orizzonti competition, Xavier Tera’s debut is an intimately observed coming-of-age marvel, finding light amidst grief and teenage uncertainties.
Kamei (Naoto Shimajiri) has been silently grieving. His father’s recent death hangs over his thoughts. In Xavier Tera’s The Colour of the Sun, bereavement also turns a conduit for the inevitable exploration youthfulness catapults. There’s a lot of hurt, unprocessed emotion which has him darting in circles. Neither can he really open up to his mother. The closed line of dialogue, a stunted chance to vent, makes healing an incredibly lonely journey. Premiering in Orizzonti competition at the Venice Film Festival, Tera’s gently shaped drama zeroes in on fine emotional detail, accruing power through modest, nevertheless piercing suggestion.
Our Share of Sand
(English)
After years apart, 12 year-old Maya returns to India with her mother to reunite with her father - a sandmining business man. Immersed in a world where labour, legacy and extraction collide, she forms a fragile bond with Kiran, a young worker. After a tragic event, a police investigation turns Maya into a key witness, with her father relying on her to absolve him. Torn between loyalty and a growing unease she cannot name, Maya begins searching for the truth. As her mother quietly unravels, Maya uncovers a pattern of silence, exploitation and repeated harm forcing her to confront her father's deception and the family's complicity she must choose to break.
Cast:
Maya Mehta, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Ellora Torchia, Krish Raj More, Ravi Patel, Jyoti Dogra
Director:
Shalini Adnani
Writer:
Shalini Adnani
The City of the Living
Drama, Thriller (Italian)
Luca is twenty-three years old. He lives with an adoptive family who loves him. He moves between the suburbs and the city center with his friends and has a girlfriend with whom he shares a love that is young, yet significant for them both. Luca is searching for his path at an age when everything still feels possible and, at the same time, already lost; in this pursuit, he leads a double life. One night, after a seemingly chance encounter, the trajectory of Luca’s life is shattered, colliding with blind and senseless violence.
Cast:
Emanuele Maria Di Stefano, Valerio Mastandrea, Simona Senzacqua, Roberta Mattei, Gaia Merlonghi
Director:
Edoardo Gabbriellini
Writer:
Damiano D'Innocenzo, Fabio D'Innocenzo
Fri, September 11 2026
Venice Film Festival 2026 | Emanuele Maria Di Stefano powers this murky, sexually ambiguous Orizzonti title which retraces the 2016 murder of 23-year-old Luca Varani.
True-crime narratives trade in lurid shocks. They have this unseemly, grotesque fascination that inadvertently replaces human consideration. The rush for dramatic re-staging bleeds out any concern for the victim, what their fuller story preceding the tragedy might be. The event itself becomes the driving lens through which we view an entire life. Premiering in Orizzonti Competition at the Venice Film Festival, Edoardo Gabbriellini’s The City of The Living’s greatest triumph is that it wholly goes beyond this limiting approach, constantly finding the complex, fledgling humanity of the victim.
The Burning Giants
Drama (Thai)
Follows an environmental and Indigenous rights activist from the Karen group who is killed after protesting the forced eviction of his village from a protected forest.
Cast:
Awat Ratanapintha, Pakapol Srirongmuang, Waywiree Ittianunkul, Tanatwut Rodpai
Director:
Phuttiphong Aroonpheng
Fri, September 11 2026
Venice Film Festival 2026 | After Manta Ray, the Thai filmmaker returns to Orizzonti competition with a formally disruptive skewering of State-backed violence.
Phuttiphong Aroonpheng is among the most aesthetically committed, politically cogent filmmakers working today. The Thai filmmaker who broke out with Manta Ray (2018) is back at Venice Film Festival, competing in Orizzonti with The Burning Giants. A mysterious virus cloaks a population in fear and uncertainty. There have been forceful evacuation, disappearances and uprooting of a community from their homes. When the film opens, we are placed right in its peculiar setting. Smoke envelops. The forest is manned by officers who have cordoned off entire sections.
The Difficult Bride
Fantasy, Drama, Thriller, Horror (Bengali)
Zai, a bride-to-be in present-day Dhaka, is in love with her groom and dreams of a fairytale wedding, but secretly struggles with her body’s resistance to wedding rituals. As stress and emotional pain intensify, a mysterious woman with long hair begins appearing in Novera’s imagination.
Cast:
Zaineen Karim Chowdhury, Reekita Nondine Shimu, Sunerah Binte Kamal, Azmeri Haque Badhon, Dameer Khan, Saberi Alam, Shatabdi Wadud, Mohammad Bari
Director:
Rubaiyat Hossain
Fri, September 11 2026
Venice Film Festival 2026 | Trailing a bride-to-be’s uncanny visions and troubled sensations, Bangladesh’s first-ever Orizzonti selection comes undone in a lame, blunt screenplay that is sorely out of sync with Leonor Teles’ striking imagery.
Leading Bangladeshi filmmaker Rubaiyat Hossain is a fascinating voice with brave, brilliant ideas. Premiering in Orizzonti Competition, her new film, The Difficult Bride, comes with massive expectations. It’s billed as a historic selection, the first-ever Bangladeshi film to land a Venice film festival competitive slot. On top of that, Hossain has repeatedly described it as a passion project, an idea that has been with her for two decades. She has honed and shaped it over many years, taking it through notable labs and grabbing prestigious grants. So, it’s a real mystery to find the eventual shape the film has resulted in as so terribly undercooked, unconvincing and painfully strained.
Aasha
Thriller (Malayalam)
Follows a stubborn, short-tempered widow named Aasha who gets into a tense altercation with a volatile man named Jeemon following a minor road accident.
Cast:
Urvashi, Joju George, Aishwarya Lekshmi, Vijayaraghavan, Ramesh Girija, Amrutha Krishnakumar, Joy Mathew, Prashant Madhavan, Shari, Kottayam Ramesh
Director:
Safar Sanal
Writer:
Joju George, Ramesh Girija, Safar Sanal
Fri, September 11 2026
Urvashi is terrific as a mother battling her own anxieties in a mystery thriller that cannot quite translate its promising premise into a compelling whole
At times, one or two sequences are all it takes to turn an otherwise unremarkable movie into a worthwhile experience. A memorable shot or a standout performance can almost make one forget the rest of its failings. The scene involving Urvashi’s titular character and a doctor in Safar Sanal’s Aasha could have become a run-of-the-mill emotional sequence of a mother realising that something dreadful might have happened to her daughter. But Urvashi lends an uncommon depth to the scene, with a performance that is not just a portrayal of a mother’s anguish over the immediate event, but also her own already frayed mental state. The way she lets stuttered words escape her lips, the voice modulation she employs, or even the way she fails to steadily hold a pen to sign a document, all come together to paint a picture of the ocean of worry within her.