Category Archives: Arts & Culture

Blake Lively’s ‘A Simple Favor 2’ co-star says she was ‘in pain’ after filming ‘It Ends With Us’: ‘Something was wrong’

One of Blake Lively’s co-stars from the upcoming “A Simple Favor” sequel claims she was “in pain” after filming “It Ends With Us.”

Michele Morrone shared a clip on his Instagram Stories on Monday supporting Lively, 37, following her bombshell complaint against Justin Baldoni, where she accused the actor of sexual harassment and mounting a smear campaign against her.

Morrone, 34, and Lively filmed “A Simple Favor 2” together earlier this year, after she wrapped production on “It Ends With Us” with Baldoni, 40, who also directed the flick.

Michele Morrone. Instagram / @iammichelemorroneofficial

Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in “It Ends With Us.” Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

“So it’s usually not my thing to make these types of videos, but I think it’s time to stand up for a person that I really love and this person is Blake Lively,” Morrone said in his video.

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“I personally met Blake during ‘A Simple Favor 2.’ We shot this incredible film together, and I felt something was wrong, and I felt the pain and then we had the opportunity to talk, me and her,” the Italian actor continued.

Michele Morrone defends Blake Lively. Instagram / @iammichelemorroneofficial

Michele Morrone in his Instagram video. Instagram / @iammichelemorroneofficial

“Blake was in pain,” Morrone said. “And I’m really tired to see those kind of cruel and bad comments about her without knowing the situation.”

Morrone noted that he included a link to the New York Times article about Lively’s claims against Baldoni “so that you can understand before commenting, what happened.”

Blake Lively filming “It Ends With Us” in Hoboken, New Jersey on May 18, 2023. GC Images

“That’s all I ask. That’s what I want you to do. Blake, I love you so much,” he added. “Keep it up and we’re going to see each other very, very soon. Love you.”

Lively starred in 2018’s “A Simple Favor” alongside Anna Kendrick. The film, like “It Ends With Us,” is based on a book. The sequel, which added Morrone to the cast, filmed from March to May of this year, and is expected to come out in 2025.

Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in “A Simple Favor.” ©Lions Gate/courtesy Everett Collecti / Everett Collection

Blake Lively in “A Simple Favor.” ©Lions Gate/courtesy Everett Collecti / Everett Collection

Meanwhile, filming for “It Ends With Us” began in May 2023 but temporarily paused due to the strikes. Production wrapped in January 2024.

When the domestic violence drama came out in August, Lively suffered a barrage of bad publicity as reports claimed that she and Baldoni — who directed the movie — clashed on set.

However, new details have come to light in Lively’s legal complaint that she filed on Friday.

Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively filming “It Ends With Us” in January. GC Images

The “Gossip Girl” alum accused Baldoni of misconduct on the set of “It Ends With Us.” She claimed that in an emergency meeting during production, Baldoni was asked to refrain from showing Lively photos or videos of nude women, talking about her dead father, and inquiring about her weight.

Baldoni, according to Lively’s lawsuit, also hired PR crisis manager Melissa Nathan — who worked with Johnny Depp during his defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard — to help him “destroy” Lively’s reputation.

Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively on the set of “It Ends With Us” in New Jersey. Christopher Peterson / SplashNews.com

Lively included copies of text messages that she alleges prove Baldoni, Nathan and others created a “retaliatory social manipulation campaign” against her after she spoke up about Baldoni’s on-set behavior.

Many stars have rushed to Lively’s side in the wake of the lawsuit, including her “A Simple Favor” director Paul Feig and her co-stars from “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera and Alexis Bledel.

Brandon Sklenar, who also starred in “It Ends With Us,” and Colleen Hoover, who wrote the book that the film is based on, have both sided with Lively, as well.

Blake Lively at the “It Ends With Us” UK gala screening in August. Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

Baldoni has denied all the accusations made against him in the lawsuit. 

“It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives, as yet another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation,” Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, previously told The Post.

Publicist Jennifer Abel, whose text exchanges with Nathan were included in Lively’s lawsuit as evidence of their alleged smear campaign against the actress, has also spoken out about the drama.

Justin Baldoni on “Today.” Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images

“What the cherry picked messages don’t include, although not shockingly as it doesn’t fit the narrative, is that there was no ‘smear’ implemented,” Abel wrote in a private Facebook post, per The Hollywood Reporter.

“No negative press was ever facilitated, no social combat plan, although we were prepared for it as it’s our job to be ready for any scenario,” Abel continued. “But we didn’t have to implement anything because the internet was doing the work for us.”

Denzel Washington’s best movies ranked from worst to best

Denzel Washington is widely recognised as one of the greatest actors of all time. With a glittering Hollywood career spanning four decades, he’s also responsible for some legendary movies.

Denzel Washington attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Paramount Pictures “Gladiator II” at TCL Chinese Theatre on November 18, 2024 in Hollywood, California. Washington’s career has spanned more than 40 years, and includes a host…
Denzel Washington attends the Los Angeles Premiere of Paramount Pictures “Gladiator II” at TCL Chinese Theatre on November 18, 2024 in Hollywood, California. Washington’s career has spanned more than 40 years, and includes a host of incredible films.
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Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
We’ve picked out ten all-timers, according to review score aggregators like Metacritic, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes, and ranked them worst to best. From Inside Man to Man on Fire, here are Denzel Washington’s top films.Remember the Titans (2000)Set in 1971, Washington plays the Virginia high school football coach who spearheads a radical new regime of integrating an all-black school with an all-white one. Not everyone is happy at the start, but Washington wins them round.The Hurricane (1999)Another one of Washington’s prestige sports dramas, this one is based on the real life story of Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, the championship boxing contender wrongfully imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit. Washington won a Best Actor Golden Globe, and was also nominated for Best Actor Academy Award.Man On Fire (2004)Tony Scott’s Man On Fire casts Washington as the less-than-heroic John Creasy, a former CIA agent turned alcoholic mercenary. The abduction of his boss’s daughter Pita (Dakota Fanning) spurs him into action, and when he gets going, Creasy can’t be stopped. At one point he inserts a bomb into someone’s backside.American Gangster (2007)Ahead of their reunion on Gladiator II, Washington teamed up with director Ridley Scott for his dastardly turn as unredemptive criminal Frank Lucas, the no-good mastermind who rises to power on the streets of ’60s New York. He’s joined by a powerhouse cast of Russell Crowe, John Hawkes, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Josh Brolin.Flight (2012)A compelling character study directed by Robert Zemeckis, Flight casts Washington as Whip Whitaker, a commercial airline pilot with a heavy addiction to alcohol. When the plane he’s flying almost crashes, he’s the heavily scrutinized subject of a national inquest.Malcolm X (1992)Before Inside Man, Spike Lee directed Washington in the epic biopic of the civil rights leader Malcolm X. His portrayal is layed, complex, and powerful, and earned Washington an Oscar nomination, losing out to Al Pacino in one of the Academy’s biggest ever upsets.Glory (1989)A historical drama chronicling the first all-black volunteer company in the US Army. While the ensemble cast features Morgan Freeman and Matthew Broderick, it’s Washington who steals the show, especially during one scene where he’s brutally flogged. As a result, he rightfully won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.Inside Man (2006)An underrated heist movie by Spike Lee, Inside Man pits Washington’s dogged Detective Keith Frazier against Clive Owen’s ultra-prepared thief Dalton Russell. With Russell taking a Manhattan bank and its customers hostages, Frazier has to find a way of getting everyone out alive, but he seems to be one step behind at every turn.Crimson Tide (1995)It’s Washington vs Hackman on board a nuclear submarine, the former a newly promoted officer, the latter a Captain. When a Russian splinter group threaten World War 3, the men battle for control of the vessel. This film marks the first of many collaborations between Washington and Tony Scott, with a script co-written by Quentin Tarantino.Training Day (2001)A crime thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua, Denzel Washington gives a career-best performance as Alonzo Harris, the LAPD narcotics officer with some pretty extreme methods. Together with his rookie partner, Ethan Hawke’s Jake Hoyt, we follow the pair over a hectic 24-hour period navigating the neighborhoods of LA, with Washington throwing off the reins and unleashing the full force of his talents.

In 2024, cult films found their audiences in real time

Something that The A.V. Club noted in our breakdown of the best films of 2024 is that, as the industry becomes more polarized between massive too-big-to-fail franchise films and all-but-ignored indies, seeking out good movies is more and more becoming the audience’s responsibility. In a corporate landscape where intellectual property’s reign as god-emperor shows no signs of relenting, it’s up to small groups of cinephiles to find each other and the new cult classics that they’ll rally around. Sometimes that just means taking a chance on something odd at the theater, but more often it’s about keeping an eye on what’s going on in the indie world and either advocating for it yourself or giving yourself over to someone else’s proselytizing. From the perennial horror breakouts to the truly DIY underdog stories, with film topics ranging from snuff streams to trans Jokers to oodles of beavers, 2024 proved that the future of film will be more dependent than ever upon reaching these engaged, specific communities.
It seems like a simple enough idea: if a filmmaking team can get their good movie in front of people who appreciate good movies, those people will help spread the word like clerks at a digital video store. But streaming is an increasingly overflowing landfill. Theatrical windows are tightening, and those that do exist are monopolized by studio juggernauts—at one point this year, Deadpool & Wolverine and Inside Out 2 (aka Disney) held more than half the theater screens in America hostage. In response, little films need to be crafty, and those that want more than blockbusters need to pay attention.

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Indiewire touched a bit on this idea back in October, focusing on microbudget comedies like Free Time, which “found holes in art houses’ schedules” to make its big-screen debut, and my favorite film of the year, Hundreds Of Beavers. Shot for just $150,000, the slapstick wonder has been making the roadshow rounds all year, zipping around festivals and smaller theaters like Chicago’s Music Box. Rather than hand Hundreds Of Beavers over to a distributor that might damn it to the streaming graveyard, those behind the film kept things in-house, relying on a scrappy social media presence and a premise so ridiculous that recommending the film to a friend was almost as fun as watching the film in the first place.

“We released this film in a no-holds-barred, get-in-the-shit-and-see-what-sticks sort of way,” Hundreds Of Beavers producer Kurt Ravenwood tells The A.V. Club. “We believed that once people watched the film, they would become advocates. So we just had to do our part to get people over their up-front reluctance to watch a dialogue-free black-and-white movie with no stars. We did this with stunts, both digital and physical, in what amounted to ‘chaos marketing.’ Paired with great publicity, great reviews, and fantastic support from the art house community, we achieved our goals.”

Assisting with this “chaos marketing,” which included riffs on other films’ posters and endless variations on the furry mascot costume at the movie’s core, was publicist Justin Cook. “I could never have predicted the response to Hundreds Of Beavers,” says Cook. “One of the things that was most impactful for my approach was the enthusiastic response from the cinephile community, both professional critics and ‘civilians.’ As a film lover, I saw [Mike Cheslik and Ryland Brickson Cole Tews]’ vision being embraced by that very vocal section of the internet (Thanks Letterboxd!) and I leaned into it hard.”

Speaking of, Hundreds Of Beavers was the second-highest rated film on Letterboxd as of the service’s mid-2024 accounting, speaking not only to the quality of the film but the grassroots effort that quality inspired. Letterboxd being used for marketing is certainly not new; the service is on every red carpet conducting interviews, and posting about new mega-releases like Wicked. Legendary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, and Francis Ford Coppola have “joined” the platform in order to post recommendation lists as part of their promotional tours. But it’s not like Letterboxd was responsible for driving folks to Wicked. Rather, the more creative use of the service highlights how franchise-averse auteurs like Scorsese are turning to the same avenues as indie up-and-comers in order to find the people who still place value on something other than IP.
That app, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, and, eventually, Bluesky not only allowed Beavers to find the folks it was made for, but provided the platforms for those communities to spread the word. And there were tangible results beyond the box office: Hundreds Of Beavers’ Blu-ray “sold out its initial stock within 12 hours,” according to Cook.
Another buzzy film that found itself embraced by the modern bastions of film appreciation was the Québécois techno-thriller Red Rooms. An unsettling, harrowing watch that critiques yet dabbles in the lurid appeals of true-crime, the most common comment floating around about Red Rooms was “Why aren’t more people talking about how fucked up Red Rooms is?” This was its distributor’s intention all along.

“Utopia’s always prided itself in providing cinematic ‘balm,’ but not just for older ‘worn out cinephiles’ but young cinephiles as well, focusing on discovery—debut and upcoming directors—alongside new or bold visions and genre-bending,” Utopia’s head of acquisitions Kyle Greenberg tells The A.V. Club.
Noting past releases including We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, Shiva Baby, and The Sweet East—narrative debuts on the bleeding edge of the American indie scene—Greenberg explains that Utopia’s approach was more about Red Rooms being snapped up by a team that understood that there was an audience intersection between the arthouse, the international, and the extremely online. Red Rooms hit the sweet spot for all three. And, because the Canadian film had a longer stretch between its initial premiere and its wider release, it followed a similar touring strategy to Hundreds Of Beavers. 
“We felt it was essential to create a long-tail for the U.S. release by building out the festival tour to create conversation city-to-city and continue to find more champions for the film—generally, we feel this approach for real independent film is integral given our budgetary restrictions in comparison to major studios/mini-majors who operate in the arthouse space and mask themselves as ‘independent’ despite having corporate backing and release their films on thousands of screens,” Greenberg explains. This meant bringing the film to festivals, lots of festivals—and not just genre fests. By hitting more mainstream fests and soliciting more coverage from local critics, who by and large all loved Red Rooms, the team was able to continue building steam for a film aimed at younger cinephiles who pay attention to reviews, Letterboxd ratings, and the ever-evolving frontier of what used to be known as “Film Twitter.” Like other films mentioned here, Red Rooms’ box office take and home viewing earnings reflect this. These movies are finding their audiences, and the audiences are finding the movies. With effort from both sides, small films like these can succeed.

“Red Rooms is an important reminder…that quality and originality are not just important,” Greenberg says, “but desired from audiences who are tired of seeing the same things over and over again.”
Some films owed their entire distribution to stirring that desire in their respective communities. The People’s Joker, for example, overcame a long and legally arduous journey from its 2022 Toronto International Film Festival premiere to its 2024 theatrical release. After filmmaker Vera Drew pulled her absurd, crowdfunded, mixed-media Joker parody from festivals under duress, word of mouth around the movie reached a feverish pitch—being told you’re not allowed to see something only makes people more curious. And because the subject matter includes, yes, multiple trans Jokers and Saturday Night Live overlord Lorne Michaels slipping on a banana peel and dying, it’s a film that, as Drew told The A.V. Club earlier this year would “simultaneously get people so excited and then get a handful of other people, like, pretty up in arms and weird about it.”
But “up in arms” is still good press. Distributor Altered Innocence stepped up to #FreeThePeoplesJoker where others wouldn’t, and released the film to its personally invested audience. “The success of The People’s Joker owes itself to many factors including being a generally fantastic film to start with, a crack-team of publicists who got the word out there to critics (who were great supporters of the film as well), but above all it could not have happened without the incredible support we had from the transgender community,” Altered Innocence founder Frank Jaffe tells The A.V. Club.

“After every popular screening we heard through Twitter and other social media spaces that these screenings were akin to a gala for the community,” Jaffe says. “A place to dress up, to see old friends and lovers, and to make new connections. We were lucky there were so many people in this community contacting their theater and asking them to play it. Altered Innocence has always strived to show films that feature marginalized communities and sexualities and will continue to do so.”
With audiences turning up in their finest clown regalia, and a filmmaker happy to post, meme, and stir the pot about her film on social media, The People’s Joker knew its niche and hit it hard. Drew became an extremely accessible figurehead for her film, as well as a bit of a symbol that those angry at Warner Bros.’ increasingly boneheaded and miserly decision-making under David Zaslav could rally behind. This, and Drew’s defiant film being one of the most evocative, hilarious, touching, and inventive trans narratives to hit the big screen, won the hearts of those mostly left behind by the studios.
That alienation is a theme another of the year’s big clown-based hits has a history of leaning into. The Terrifier franchise has always played to its studio-agnostic base of hardcore horror freaks, who have long found their niche homes on genre-specific websites. Dread Central was affiliated with the first film in the series, but once Bloody Disgusting and its corporate owner Cineverse got involved, Art The Clown was off to the races. Horror is always the safe bet for a return on your investment, but Terrifier films have long been tearing the competition apart limb by limb—partially through old-school appeal (being an “unrated” horror is a selling point for the sickos) and partially through investing everything in reaching the audiences that were most likely to go see this bloodbath.

“By listening to existing and new fans alike and leaning into parasocial relationships by speaking in Art The Clown’s ‘voice’ we were able to leverage stunts and a social media campaign to extend their experience beyond the screen,” Cineverse’s Chief Content Officer Yolanda Macias tells The A.V. Club. Parasocial online relationships, either with brands or influencers, are perhaps more prevalent than ever. Understanding that, and approaching the niche that’s happened to glom onto your films, is essential for smaller fare. “We didn’t spend a dime in national media,” Cineverse CEO Chris McGurk said. “It’s a waste of time. If you have the tools to hyper-identify the fan bases you’re going after, then it’s basically just throw the whole rulebook out.”
This hyper-identification meant traditional demographic work—like seeing that “women and Latino moviegoers were driving the box office beyond the core fandom”—and analysis that required those marketing the film to actually think like people going to see a movie, like how Cineverse found that Terrifier 3 had become something friend groups were attending as a splattery, dare-like event.
Now on its way back into theaters for a limited run on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Terrifier 3 looks to add to its haul as the highest-grossing unrated movie of all time. It’s not like Terrifier 3 is a masterpiece or a feat of unprecedented marketing genius. It’s simply a solid film that played to its crowd, backed by people who still believe in the power of the movie theater. In a year where Warner Bros. pulled what could be Clint Eastwood’s final film after just a week in theaters, that still means something.

Also rallying behind the novel idea of “allowing your movie to play in a movie theater,” artsier horror like The Substance made a huge splash—especially for a Palme d’Or competitor—based off its buzzy premise, admitted star power, and gross-out bonafides, while Longlegs worked overtime to milk the mystery from its upsetting (often disguised) imagery. These films had more established companies behind them, Mubi and Neon respectively, but both still broke out beyond what anyone ever expected. Mubi went all-out for its first theatrical distribution, picking up what Universal dropped and showing that they knew what to do with it. Neon, which has long defied expectations as a smaller distribution house with killer taste, pushed Longlegs with one of the year’s most compelling campaigns.
“Film marketing has become increasingly distanced from the people that matter most: the audience,” Neon’s Chief Marketing Officer Christian Parkes tells The A.V. Club. “In response, the entire Longlegs campaign was built out of respect for the horror audience and a desire to build something that they could be a part of. Thematically inspired by William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock, we methodically gave them every piece of the puzzle over the course of six months without ever pandering or failing to put them first. The success of the film belongs to them.”

Through promotional material mainly released in code and adamant about hiding Nicolas Cage’s getup for the off-putting title role—treating him more like a monster from a creature feature than Hannibal Lecter. Add in some nasty, oddball tics from that central performance and an unforgettable make-up job that turned Cage’s performance into a walking nightmare, and you’ve got a film with long, long legs. This was, of course, a gamble. Banking on an audience being compelled rather than repelled by a gimmick speaks to the same kind of respect shown by the films mentioned here with far fewer dollars to spend. Yet, the goal is still the same: Remind audiences that it’s not all just slop out there. Whether that means grabbing their attention with an inventive series of ads, or simply worming your way into their consciousness by meeting them where they’re at, the little films that scored big in 2024 found their communities.
Most of these films aren’t changing the industry, or enriching those who made them. They’re films that, through their inventive routes to success, made enough of a dent to steal a gasp of oxygen from the gluttons hogging the air at the box office. In 2024, there’s not really time to wait around and hope to be reclaimed as a cult classic. The cults are still there, just necessarily forming in real time. Finding them requires specificity, individuality, and passion. As Hundreds Of Beavers producer Ravenwood says, “there’s no silver bullet, and what worked for Beavers (unhinged chaos) may not work for future projects.” But, as that film’s publicist concludes, there’s also a sunny side to this evolving relationship between audiences, filmmakers, critics, and promoters: “Creativity is far from dead, it just needs to be championed.”

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Allu Arjun’s Pushpa 2 Becomes First Hindi-Dubbed Film to Cross Rs 700 Crore

Allu Arjun’s Pushpa 2 Becomes First Hindi-Dubbed Film to Cross Rs 700 CroreSowmya SangamHans News Service | 24 Dec 2024 5:34 PM IST

An Indian movie, loved abroad, is snubbed at home for Oscar submission

All We Imagine as Light, a film about working class women in Mumbai, won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival this year. From left: actor Divya Prabha, director Payal Kapadia, and actors Chhaya Kadam and Kani Kusruti pose during the Cannes closing ceremony.

Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images/AFP

Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images/AFP

MUMBAI, India — There’s a scene in All We Imagine as Light, where a middle-aged cook and a nurse, lit by the glare of streetlight, laugh and hurl rocks at a banner advertising a luxury development — the construction of which will raze the cook’s home. Then the women bolt. That cathartic protest — small in the face of the obstacle it must tackle — speaks to how this movie captures the mismatched odds between workers and the city they keep running. Directed by Payal Kapadia, the film also centers on the friendships between women who are otherwise alone.
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Kapadia’s skill in drawing out these themes has been widely acclaimed. Her film was the first from India to win the Grand Prix at Cannes since 1946, the second highest honor at the world’s most famous film festival. The New York Times and The Associated Press called it the best movie of 2024; it won best international feature at the Gotham Awards.   Those are just the highlights. But what that list doesn’t include: the Oscars. The international acclaim for All We Imagine as Light raised hopes that India might finally have a serious contender for an Oscar in the best foreign film category. And it was indeed considered by the Indian committee that selects a film to be the country’s submission to the Oscars. Deciding which movie should represent a country as vast and cinematically prolific as India is always difficult. Ultimately All We Imagine as Light was not selected, but the reason why generated much controversy: The judging committee felt that the film was not Indian enough. Ravi Kottarakara, president of the Film Federation of India, the body that forms the jury to select India’s submission — told Hollywood Reporter India that the jury felt it was like “watching a European film taking place in India.” Perhaps he was referring to its broody light, the lingering shots, the story’s gentle unfurling.
What defines a film as Indian? “I’m at a loss on this,” says director Kapadia. “I don’t know how we can define what is Indian and what is not, but the actors are Indian. The entire crew was Indian,” she says, except for one French citizen. And so was the story’s subject matter. The film follows three women living in Mumbai. Parvaty is trying to save her home with the help of Prabha, a stoic nurse — who is like an older sister to her roommate Anu, who’s always late paying the rent. Anu has fled small-town life to live in Mumbai, but even here, she’s harshly judged because she’s Hindu and has a Muslim boyfriend in a place that abhors mixed-faith romance. Mumbai, the city of more than 20 million people, is the other main character: A place where billionaires share the same streets with children who sleep on sidewalks. Mumbai is shown through the prism of these women. It’s largely filmed in the darkness, through windows of apartments, buses and on train commutes to work, in pre-dawn and late-night darkness. “I don’t remember a film that has captured Mumbai as intimately as All We Imagine as Light,” says Ankur Pathak, a Mumbai-based assistant director and writer. “From the houses that feel so lived in to just the struggles of working women.” Enter: the light The light — of the movie title — literally enters the movie when the women leave Mumbai to help Parvaty resettle in her ancestral village. The break from the city helps each of the women find a way to shuffle alongside life’s hardships. But Kapadia’s movie touches on uncomfortable themes for many Indians, most controversially, the sexual relationship between the Hindu protagonist, Anu, and her Muslim boyfriend, Shiaz. For years, the ruling Hindu nationalist party, BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has accused Muslim men of luring Hindu women to Islam through relationships, an unfounded conspiracy that is nevertheless widely-believed and is known as “love jihad.” Nearly a dozen of India’s 29 states have introduced laws that ostensibly tackle this conspiracy by banning the use of marriage to pressure someone into converting.
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Kapadia says she deliberately sought to explore how love is “a very political decision” in India by creating a relationship between two characters “that would face a lot of difficulty” but “in a very natural way — that they are actually just two people, two young people who had fallen in love.” It works, says Ankur Pathak, a screenwriter and assistant director. “You’re … rooting for the love story and not being distracted by the political messaging.” Did Cannes victory lead to a backlash? But screenwriter Pathak doesn’t think Kapadia’s exploration of controversial relationships caused the Oscar snub. It was the film’s languid sensibilities, he says. “The very fact that it won at Cannes,” he says, shored up a preconception among Indian filmmakers that Kapadia’s work was catering “to the European gaze.” For its submission to the Oscars, the film federation picked “Lost Ladies,” by prominent female director Kiran Rao. It’s a big-hearted movie about two brides who are mistakenly picked up from the train station by the wrong grooms — because they are both wearing similar veils covering their faces. But the movie hasn’t had the same international buzz as All We Imagine As Light, which film critic Anna Vetticad says is key for an Oscar win. “If you are choosing to send the film to the Oscars, then it makes sense for you to figure out which film you think has the biggest chance of winning,” she says. Lost Ladies did not make it to the shortlist of Oscar finalists. Adding to the controversy, the all-male jury explained their choice of movie with a statement that began with, “Indian women are a strange mixture of submission and dominance.” Kottarakara, the film federation of India, told local media that the jury had meant to imply that Indian women are like Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and fortune, and like Kali, the goddess of death, time and violence.
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“Their description was quite ridiculous and condescending,” says film critic Vetticat — condescending both to the movie that India selected to win an Oscar, she says as well as to the one it saw as not Indian enough. With additional reporting by Omkar Khandekar