(Thinley Lhamo from Shambhala by Min Bahadur Bham, © Aditya Basnet / Shooney Films)   By M.R. D’Amico   It is the first Nepalese film to be in competition at Berlinale and one of the best surprises of the festival. In a Nepalese Himalayan village a young beautiful woman, Pema, starts her adult life with a polyandrous marriage to Tashi and his two younger brothe...

  (A still of Thinley Lhamo from Shambhala by Min Bahadur Bham, © Aditya Basnet / Shooney Films)   By Lindsay R. ''Lulu'' Bellinger Shambhala is a glorious exploration of womanhood, being true to one's self and determination. Thinley Lhamo's riveting and subtle portrayal of Pema is so gentle yet strong. I would not be at all disappointed if she won the Silver Bear for best leading performance. Pema becomes the wife of Tashi and his two ...

Uunchai, Review: Plateau Rajshri Productions have a tradition of making family oriented subjects and shaping them into very lengthy films. By comparison, Uunchai, at 169 minutes, is a short film. Even at that length, it fails to reach the heights that the cast and the director promise. With no less an actor than Amitabh Bachchan himself heading the cast, Uunchai (height; spelt unconventionally, this was instead of the phonetic, Oonchai) was expected to reach some dizzy heights, with a s...

MIFF 2020: A lost homeland land and a new home Eight years and eighty lakhs is what it took USA-based music-video maker Sapna Bhavnani to make Sindhustan, 64-minute a labour of love, about the largest migration in history, that of Hindu Sindhis from Sind, now in Pakistan, to present day India. By contrast, Atanu Mukherjee’s 26-minute tale of a migrant single woman from Jabalpur who wants to settle in Mumbai, and her encounters with a transgender person, titled Wig, took just three days ...

India’s Most Wanted, Review: Mission without ammunition, found wanting Indian spy thrillers have been on the scene ever since the first film of James from Thames was released in India in the early 1960s. They were broadly divided into categories: rip-offs of 007 and C grade thrillers, with action and a bit of titillation. Remarkably, some of them even managed to incorporate catchy songs into the narrative. In the last two decades, after international terrorism, other than the eternal bo...

The irrepressible Terry Gifford   KATHMANDU ~ The Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF) 2010 has concluded with the top award in the international competition going to The Broken Moon (Brazil), directed by Marcos Negrao and Andre Rangel. Announcing the winner, lead judge Terry Gifford described The Broken Moon as “brilliantly filmed, brilliantly lit and brilliantly framed.” He said the jury had not had any problem in selecting the winner; they unanimou...

The 10th Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF) got underway today and will screen some 62 films from 35 different countries before closing on Monday. The opening ceremony was not attended by any celebrities; there were no film stars and only a handful of dignitaries. Instead of champagne and canapés, there was tea and biscuits.  “ We thought of inviting the President, but we weren’t sure if we could handle the cavalcade that would follow,” said the Festival Di...