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Siraj Syed is the India Correspondent for FilmFestivals.com and a member of FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics. He is a Film Festival Correspondent since 1976, Film-critic since 1969 and a Feature-writer since 1970. He is also an acting and dialogue coach. @SirajHSyed
MAMI’s Mumbai Film Festival: The chosen ones, the winning ones
It must have been January 1995. A group of film-makers and film-buffs were talking about Mumbai having its own film festival, since the International Film Festival of India was held in New Delhi, and Filmotsav was a travelling festival that had rarely come here. Although the hub of film activity and endowed with a world class infrastructure, the festival was held in Mumbai only four times in 43 years. The group included Shya...
Jagran Film Festival awakens us to some great cinema
Back after a three-year hiatus, prompted by the Coronavirus Covid 19, Jagran Film Festival (JFF) stuck to its base in Mumbai, the Cinépolis multiplex. It was held on four days, 12, 13, 14 and 15 October, 2023. JFF is one of the largest travelling film festivals in the world, and, probably, the only one of its kind in India. The International Film Festival of India, under the name Filmotsav, used to be held at different venues every a...
Mujib-The Making of a Nation, Review: How to fit three decades in three hours
Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rehman, the tall, towering personality who was the single most important leader of East Pakistan, and largely responsible for the creation of BanglaDesh, served as President of his free country during 25 January 1975-15 August 1975, a period of only eight months. In an unfortunate co-incidence, he died on the Independence Day of India. Indian producer-director-actor I.S. Johar made a film called Joi ...
Hara Vahi Jo Lada Nahi (only he who did not fight loses) is the tagline on the book, 12th Fail, written in Hindi by Anurag Pathak and translated into English by Gautam Choubey and Lalit Kumar. For the film version, the writing credits go to Vidhu Vinod Chopra (who has directed the movie), Jaskunwar Kohli (co-writer), Anurag Pathak (associate writer) and Aayush Saxena. A village student, Manoj Kumar Sharma, who failed his 12th exams, who does not know where his next meal is going to come from, ...
IPTA’s Inter Collegiate Drama Competition scores 50, marches on
Was it the first or was it the second? Was it 1972 or 1973? My introduction to the annual competition is nevertheless at least 49 years old. I had just finished college, and could not participate. How I wished I could! But I could watch the event, and, soon afterwards, write about it, extensively, in several publications, as a theatre critic. If memory serves me right, back then, it was called IPTA’s Inter Collegiate ...
Leo, Review: The hyena trapper’s identity crisis
When a film from the South is set in Himachal Pradesh, there must be a good reason. And when the same film has Sanjay Dutt in a pivotal role, you look forward to some exciting moments. There are indeed such moments in Leo. The problem is that it tries to roll three stories in one joint (a large chunk of the film deals with cigarette manufacturing). The film is redeemed by an inspired performance by ‘Thalapathy’ Vijay, his seco...
Ghost, Review: Jailhouse Rock
‘The Warden threw a party in the county jail, The prison band was there and they began to wail’ wrote Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, for the legendary Elvis Presley to sing, in the 1957 film, Jailhouse Rock, a jail film, as the title suggests. 66 years later, we have an Indian jail film that draws no inspiration from Jailhouse Rock. In fact, it is not clear at all where the inspiration, if any, for Ghost, came from. Could it have come from a ghost? A ...
Mission Raniganj-The Great Bharat Rescue, Review: The capsule that saved 65 lives
Few films have done as much disservice to their cause by having a misnomer as a title as Mission Raniganj. There is no Bharat Rescue, although the film is about a rescue. Over the last decade, there has been a spate of films with the Mission prefix, dealing either with operations against Pakistan or our scientific achievements. So, if the name of the film at hand been merely Mission Raniganj, it would have been ...
Thank You for Coming, Review: Desperately Seeking the Big O
Here’s a thumbs up for picking a taboo issue. And here’s a thumbs down for making a mess of it. Thank You for Coming deals with female sexuality in a society where it is the male who dominates a lot of things, including sexual relations. After going halfway down the foreplay, the film then turns into a whodunit, and, simultaneously, a whodidnotdunit. If you are not aware what the big O is, this film might be for you, whet...
800, Review: The numbers game
If you have not done your research already, you must be told that this film is about cricket, and, more specifically, about Mutthiah Muralitharan (also spelt Muralidaran), the SriLankan spin bowler who holds the record for taking the maximum number of wickets in Test match cricket – 800. And hence the name of the film. A biopic that dramatises and recreates his life, right from the time when he was a little kid, till the time when he retired from the game. ...
Dono, Review: Between Dono and Donot
It takes two to get married. Three into two won’t go. So how about four? That’s a no-no. No, not four persons getting married ensemble, but the bride and the groom, plus two heart-broken souls. That sounds an interesting premise. Even as the couple are preparing to exchange vows, there is a man around, who secretly loved the bride-to-be, and there is a woman, who has broken-up with an abusive and domineering boy-friend, who is around too. Nothi...
Mark Antony, Review: Mark and Tony and Telephony
Inspired by the works of Shakespeare’s prodigal cousin, Shake Speer, this assault on your senses is a tribute to the Emperors Brutius and Scissor (real names Mark and Antony). Some 40 years ago, a TV series was made in Mumbai called Indradhanush. It was the first sci-fi, time-travel serial, where a remote control has the power to transport the bearer to a time centuries ago. I should know. I played the Mafia Don villain, who uses this rem...
The Vaccine War, Review: Vaccinema
With a no brainer of a title, the docu-feature is indeed about the vaccine for Covid 19 Coronavirus, India’s first bio-science film. But what about the ‘war’? Granted that the pandemic had to be dealt with in a war-like situation, this is an exaggerated term to describe the war-footing under which Indian scientists prepared the above vaccine, and the desperate measures that some western countries adopted to deride these efforts. Their motiv...
Tumse Na Ho Payega, Review: The taste of the pudding
They have given it a negative title, which translates as You Will Not Be Able to Do it. Earlier, it was called Bas Karo Aunty (That’s Enough, Aunty). Nobody in the film says this (the title) line, and the thrust of the film is positive: that one should not take defeats and ridicule seriously, and carve a niche for oneself, as an entrepreneur. The film is based on the book How I Braved Anu Aunty and Co-Founded a Million Dollar Company,...
The Great Indian Family, Review: Pandit pop’s bhajan singing son is a Muslim
What a roundabout route it has taken to emerge as The Great Indian Family! It began with the 2010 British film The Infidel, starring Omid Djalili (the D is silent), directed by Josh Appignanesi and a cast that included South Asian sounding names like Archie Panjabi, Saamiya Nasir, James Krishna Floyd, Nabi Nasir, Mina Anwar, Amit Shah, Uzma, Ravin J. Ganatra and Niraj Naik. Five years later, we had an Indian ad...
Sukhee, Review: What’s so bad about feeling good?
If you are a woman, as typified by the protagonist in Sukhee, there’s plenty bad about feeling good. The Sukhee women want to be independent and do things that only men indulge in, at least most of them. But can they get away with such audacity? That’s a good platform for developing an attractive screenplay. Sadly, Sukhee, which means Happy, tries too many things and, in the process, dissipates the central idea. It also bring...
Sukhee, Review: What’s so bad about feeling good?
If you are a woman, as typified by the protagonist in Sukhee, there’s plenty bad about feeling good. The Sukhee women want to be independent and do things that only men indulge in, at least most of them. But can they get away with such audacity? That’s a good platform for developing an attractive screenplay. Sadly, Sukhee, which means Happy, tries too many things and, in the process, dissipates the central idea. It also bring...
Jawan, Review: Eggs on the windshield
You can be pardoned for believing that Jawan is Pathaan rebooted, if you walked in as ShahRukh Khan (SRK) is lying half-dead on a bed somewhere near the Indian border (with which country?) and a chinky medicine man is spending days, and possibly weeks, using all kinds of herbs and other local Ayurvedic medicine to revive him. It was exactly the same in Pathaan, where he was nursed back by a Pathaan tribe. Obviously, the makers thought once is not enough, ...
Fukrey 3, Trailer launch: Risqué sera sera
On an authoritative website, the word ‘Fukrey’ translates as ‘slackers’. It must be native to Delhi and its environs, as I have never come across this word anywhere else. That a Mumbai-based production house (Excel Entertainment, of Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani), bank-rolled this definitive Delhi dalliances caper, beginning with its first episode in 2013, and stayed with it for another 10 years, shows the faith the...
Ramblings of a Bandra Boy, Book release: Haps, mishaps and madcaps
Joy Bimal Roy has lived his entire, or almost entire life, in the Mumbai suburb of Bandra. The only son of venerated film producer and director Bimal Roy, his address was Godiwala Bungalow, Mount Mary Road. And living there has given him much joy, though his name ought to be spelt Jai for non-Bengalis, Joy being the Bengali way of pronouncing the more common Jai. Joy’s book, Ramblings of a Bandra Boy, was released at the...
Bambai Meri Jaan, Trailer release: Kay Kay is on a role
In the crime thriller Bambai Meri Jaan, Kay Kay Menon plays the key role of Ismail Kadri, an honest cop. Just the other day, I was chatting with a fellow journalist and we both agreed that Kay Kay’s portrayal of a victimised badminton coach in the very recent sleeper film, Love All, salvaged his reputation of playing hardened cops or intelligence officers, as a norm. He did a pretty good job, and Love All led us to believe ...
Kaala, Trailer launch: Reverse osmosis – turning white money into black
There has been an ongoing illegal operation conducted in India over many a decade: it is called the generation and circulation of ‘black money’. ‘Black money’ is unaccounted wealth, on which no tax has been paid. Most black money transactions have been conducted in cash, to avoid leaving any trace. There is no record of the amount of money that has been floating in the market, as black money....
Goldfish, Review: Without your memory, you are like a goldfish out of water
Probably used as a metaphor for the memory lapses of its central character, who is suffering from dementia, the goldfish, believed to have a memory span of three seconds, has, in fact, a rather long memory. On the website Live Science, the short-memory theory has been debunked, “In reality, goldfish (Carassius auratus) have much longer memories — spanning weeks, months and even years. And the science...
Love All, Review: Goodbye badminton, Hello badminton
No, it’s not about love as is depicted in Hindustani films. And it certainly does not propagate the noble axiom, Love All. The ‘love’ here is derived from the French, l’oeuf, which means an egg, but is pronounced very nearly like love. Since the score 0 (zero) in games like tennis and badminton is the starting point for the players, these games begin with Love All. After a dozen films on cricket, footfall, hockey, sp...
One Friday Night, Review: Cheat on wife, pay with life
Get captivated by the Pawna Lake hilly region, close to Mumbai. Watch Raveena Tandon and Milind Soman in a first time pairing. Sit back as Vidhi Chitalia enters the scene, playing the ‘other woman’, the third angle of the triangle. And go along with the flow, as One Friday Night works towards the only real twist in the tale, the climax. That is if you care for this narrative and cast. If not, don’t spend One Friday Night...
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About Siraj Syed
 Syed Siraj
(Siraj Associates)
Siraj Syed is a film-critic since 1970 and a Former President of the Freelance Film Journalists' Combine of India.
He is the India Correspondent of FilmFestivals.com and a member of FIPRESCI, the international Federation of Film Critics, Munich, Germany
Siraj Syed has contributed over 1,015 articles on cinema, international film festivals, conventions, exhibitions, etc., most recently, at IFFI (Goa), MIFF (Mumbai), MFF/MAMI (Mumbai) and CommunicAsia (Singapore). He often edits film festival daily bulletins.
He is also an actor and a dubbing artiste. Further, he has been teaching media, acting and dubbing at over 30 institutes in India and Singapore, since 1984.
Bandra West, Mumbai India View my profileSend me a message
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