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Upamanyu Bhattacharya’s animated feature “Heirloom” has the emerged from the crucible of Annecy, one of the world’s top animation festivals.

The Indian work-in progress film has been selected for the 22nd Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf), the project market that operates concurrently with FilMart.

In the film, Sonal, a teacher, grapples with a hereditary disease, mirroring her mother’s untimely demise. Kirti, her husband and inheritor of a handloom trade, invests generously in a traditional fabric museum collection. Sonal instead advocates that the mill be modernized, sparking conflicts between the two. Kirti’s financial mismanagement leads to a fight and his own mysterious disappearance. Meanwhile, their daughter, Mrinalini, bonds with terrace-dwelling grandmother Baa, unraveling a family tapestry. Sonal falls ill again and in despair, she unravels Kirti’s mystery and is compelled to reflect on her connection to the past and the future.

The project was...

Top Indian actor and emerging producer Taapsee Pannu is on a tear with a welter of projects lined up.

Pannu debuted as a producer with horror-thriller “Blurr” (2022) that she co-produced via her Outsiders Films. The company’s next, “Dhak Dhak,” which follows four women who set out for a road trip to the highest motorable pass in the world on a motorbike journey of self-discovery, went on theatrical release on Oct. 13. While “Blurr” starred Pannu, “Dhak Dhak” sees her serving as a producer only and stars Ratna Pathak Shah, Dia Mirza, Fatima Sana Sheikh and Sanjana Sanghi. “Dhak Dhak” is produced by Outsiders, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, BLM Pictures and One India Stories.

“When you release a film, that’s a different monster altogether, nobody’s understanding why you want to release this film in theaters, because it has no big stars, it’s got no formula and no conventional...

Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 27 (Ians) Even as his debut movie is getting ready for release, Malayalam debut director Joseph Manu James has died just at an age of 31. The last rites were held on Sunday at Kuravilangad of Kerala’s Kottayam district.

Joseph Manu James had passed away on Friday while undergoing treatment for hepatitis at a private hospital in Aluva. He had recently completed shooting for his first directorial venture ‘Nancy Rani’ and post-production work is still in progress.

The movie features Ahaana Krishna, Sunny Wayne, Aju Varghese, and Arjun Ashokan, among others.

“Gone too soon brother,” actor Aju Varghese posted on his Instagram handle.

Starting off as a child actor in 2004 in ‘I am curious’, Manu Joseph went on to become an assistant director in Malayalam, Kannada, and Hindi movies.

The Malayalam film fraternity has expressed shock and dismay over the demise of the young filmmaker.

Joseph Manu James is survived by his wife Naina,...

Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra can’t stop praising Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Sudhir has directed Nawaz in the streaming movie ‘Serious Men’, which was based on Manu Joseph’s novel of the same name.

Heaping praises on the actor, Sudhir mentioned that Nawaz had surrendered himself with all that talent to him. He said, “When I worked with Nawaz in serious men, I had a wonderful experience. He just hands himself over to you and he is this perfect. If you read any interview of Nawaz, he always says that I have done nothing, whatever Sudhir Bhai asked me to do, I did.”

Explaining what Nawaz said is partly correct, the filmmaker added, “It’s right to an extent but that’s wrong because he is handing himself to me with all that talent. So when I tell him something, it goes through that talent, through that skill set and emerges. He is...

Mumbai, Dec 29 (Ians) Senior journalist and screenwriter Manu Joseph, who’s the writer and creator of the recently-released comedy series ‘Decoupled’, harbours sympathy for vocations other than writing because in writing everything is documented as opposed to other professions. Talking about what separates writers from other working professionals, Manu says, “One fortune for writers is […]...

Mumbai, Sep 25 (Ians) Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui says his character in ‘Serious Men’ itself is a flawed one but eventually he stays with people. Based on Manu Joseph’s book by the same name, the film is a sharp take on ambition and caste politics, put in perspective in the Indian context. The actor has been […]...

A smart observation of the nuances of the Indian caste system with an ambition of universality, “Serious Men” by director Sudhir Mishra was released in Covid times and it went straight to the Netflix catalogue, as many films of 2020 did. The film is adapted from a very popular novel of the same name by Manu Joseph and is dedicated to the director’s father, the late mathematician and educationist Dr. Dn Misra.

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The serious men of the title are the upper-class intellectuals, as opposite to our protagonist Ayyan Mani (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a Dalit living in Mumbai’s slums with his down-to-earth wife Oja (Indira Tawari). He is an educated man though, and has a good job at the National Institute for Fundamental Research, as a personal assistant to Arvind Acharya (Nasser) a Brahmin arrogant scientist who is trying to keep...

By Sugandha Rawal

New Delhi, Oct 31 (Ians) For Sudhir Mishra, the pandemic has left an everlasting impact on his life, and not everything about it is good. The filmmaker says holding his ill father in his arms and running towards the ICU, and then watching him die has changed him, and he is still figuring out how.

"You know, (author) Manu Joseph once wrote an article about me and said that 'I'm the collector of frail men'. Now, I see myself as much more frail after the pandemic," Mishra told Ians, when asked about the projects he is working on.

"I'd like to relook at things that I've been working on. I am working on a film, I am working on a script, I am working on a couple of Ott long form things. There is a historical series that I am rewriting. So, there is a lot of work,...

Serious Men(Netflix)

Starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui,Indira Tiwari,Nassar,Aakshath Das,Sanjay Narvekar,Shweta Basu Prasad

Directed by Sudhir Mishra

It’s about memory retention, ratta maar ke. The boy-genius played with astonishing wisdom by Akshath Das, is really not a prodigy his father is determined to prove him to be.

It’s a lethal mind-game that eventually leads to monstrous tragedy, and only the father and son are supposed know about it. Nawazuddin Siddiqui over-ambitious patriarch’s act will move, stir and terrify you. In what is arguably his finest performance to date he is chillingly real in his parental paranoia , killingly clued-in as the Tamilian Dalit Ayyan Mani, a lowly assistant at a science institute researching on alien microbes which don’t exist. Never did.

Just like his young son Adi’s prodigious mind. An invention of the modern age wherein a non-existence idea acquires authenticity by sheer repetition.

ReviewThe film is hollow in its understanding of caste and dangerously makes light of caste-based discrimination.Balakrishna GaneshanSudhir Mishra's film Serious Men opens with a song that goes "Raath kaala chaatha jis par ithne saare ched/ tezaab udela kisne is par jaanu na paaye" and as it plays, Ayyan Mani (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) narrates in the background: “I like this song very much. I don't know why. I don’t know its meaning. And a song which we don't understand can be played in all situations. Life is also such — complex. We are born without a meaning and die without one. Like how my grandfather died. While he was returning to the village on a train, he unknowingly boarded the first class compartment. And somebody jokingly said in his ears, 'Dada, you have boarded the Brahmin compartment. And he died of a heart attack'. Now what is the meaning of this?...

Just when you thought you had seen all that sums up the brilliance of Nawazuddin Siddiqui, he springs a new surprise reminding there is much more to come. He does it every time. He just did it again.

In Serious Men, Sudhir Mishra casts Siddiqui as Ayyan Mani, a Dalit migrant from Tamil Nadu in Mumbai. He lives in a one-room chawl with wife and little son, and works as a personal assistant to an important man in an important organisation.

Ayyan could be summed up by the cliches of socio-cultural constraint that such a backdrop normally brings in its wake, except that there is a quirk about the protagonist that lets Siddiqui revel in his role. Far from being one among the countless hordes that suffer silently in the dank underbelly of Maximum City, self-made Ayyan has learnt to use everything and everybody at his disposal, in a bid...

Serious Men movie review is here. Directed by Sudhir Mishra, the movie is based on the book of the same name by Manu Joseph. Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays the lead in the movie produced by Bombay Fables and Cineraas Entertainment. Serious Men will release on Netflix on October 02 October 2020.

Serious Men Movie Review

Sudhir Mishra’s new film Serious Men revolves around Ayyan Mani (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a middle-aged Dalit working as an assistant to a Brahmin astronomer Acharya (Nassar) at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai. He lives in a slum with his wife played by Indira Tiwari and son Adi (Aakshath Das). Furious at his situation in life, Ayyan develops an outrageous story that his 10-year-old son is a mathematical genius - a lie which later gets out of control.

Watch Serious Men Official Trailer

https://youtu.be/naXf8R1aOik

Based on the book of the same name by Manu Joseph,...

Ayyan Mani has many dreams, but his vision is the 4G model, i.e. the four generation model that he explains in the trailer of the Netflix Film, Serious Men, where the fourth generation of an under-privileged family is able to join the world of the eponymous serious men.

Directed by National Award winner Sudhir Mishra, and starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Ayyan Mani, the film is based on the novel by the same name, written by author Manu Joseph. The script has been brought to life by writer-producer Bhavesh Mandalia (Oh My God! and Angrezi Medium) and filming occurred in Mumbai.

Talking about Serious Men on Netflix Sudhir Mishra said, “The great thing about Manu Joseph’s novel is that it is funny and wacky, yet deeply emotional. The film charts its own graph for the transformation of the story to another medium, but it still remains an endearing story...

OTTNetflix India had been teasing the announcement with the hashtag #ComeOnNetflix on Twitter.Tnm StaffA still from 'A Suitable Boy'After a suspenseful build-up over many days, Netflix India on Thursday unveiled 17 original films, including six new films and two new series that will be released on the streaming website in the coming months. Some of these include A Suitable Boy, Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl, Ludo and Bombay Rose, the first Indian animation film ever selected to open Venice Critics’ Week. The movies that are being released are the inspiring true story of Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl; a dysfunctional family drama Tribhanga - Tedhi Medhi Crazy; a horror story set in a village in Punjab Kaali Khuhi; Serious Men, a witty drama based on Manu Joseph’s novel; an intense police drama Class Of ’83 and a uniquely entertaining dark comedy Ak vs Ak (starring Anil Kapoor and Anurag Kashyap...

National Award-winning filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, who is collaborating with Bollwyood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui for the screen adaptation of the novel "Serious Men", says he was keen to work with the actor and was awaiting the right role to offer to him.

On their collaboration, Mishra told Ians: "What can I say about Nawaz that has already not been said? He is a wonderful actor and I always wanted to work with him. But I had to offer him something interesting because good actors are always attracted to a good script. In Manu Joseph's 'Serious Men', I found one part for him."

"Serious Men" released in 2010. It is a story of class and gender conflict.

Talking more about it, Mishra said: "It is a great story that revolves around the relationship of a father and son from the Dalit community. Though there is a lot of angst in him...

Taking the digital revolution to a new high, the global streaming giant Netflix has added more muscle to its Indian arm by announcing these 10 original films spanning genres that involves Bollywood A?list artistes and technicians.

Beginning with Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment, which will produce Class Of 83 to be helmed by writer director Atul Sabharwal (Aurangzeb). The movie revolves around a righteous policeman and his complexities. Apart from Class Of 83, Red Chillies will also honour its previous commitment to produce the spy thriller series Bard Of Blood for Netflix.

In a very interesting development, Ghost Stories will see the rare reunion of Karan Johar, Zoya Akhtar, Dibakar Banerjee and Anurag Kashyap after Lust Stories. Ronnie Screwvala?s banner RSVP will produce Ghost Stories.

Khosla Ka Ghosla!, Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! fame Dibakar Banerjee will also be directing and producing a movie by the name Freedom, Netflix has...

Netflix has commissioned ten new original films in India.

The streaming giant will be working with big local directors and producers including Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur) and Ronnie Screwvala (Chennai Express). Genres of the new commissions include drama, sci-fi, thriller, horror, comedy and romance. Scroll down for the list of projects.

By the end of 2020, a total of 15 new original Indian films, including previously announced titles such as Music Teacher, Cobalt Blue, Chopsticks, Upstarts and Bulbul, will be available on the service.

“When Netflix launched in India, we changed the way Indian audiences enjoy their films,” said Srishti Behl Arya, Director – International Original Film, India, Netflix. “Given our diversity, history and culture, India is home to powerful stories waiting to be told to audiences around the world. The depth of talent and vision of our creators is enabling us to create films our members will love. We want to...