Bharati Dubey

Mumbai: Spider-Man continues to enjoy phenomenal success at the Indian box office, highlighting the country's enduring fascination with Hollywood superheroes. But the craze also raises an important question: Has Bollywood missed the opportunity to build its own superhero universe? India has produced memorable superheroes like Shaktimaan and the Krrish franchise, while Indian comics are home to several iconic characters. Yet, unlike Hollywood, the Hindi film industry has not consistently...

Mumbai: For all the progress Hindi cinema likes to claim, one uncomfortable truth keeps returning to the surface and that is, the industry still does not know how to build women into lasting theatrical phenomena. Alia Bhatt’s Alpha is only the latest reminder. The mixed reaction to it at the box-office and the negativity on social media has exposed something larger than BO arithmetic. It has reopened the old question of why female-led films in Bollywood are still treated as exceptions and not...

From Lagaan to Dhurandhar, eight movies that dismantled old certainties and transformed Indian cinema over the past quarter-century. On June 15, 1896, less than seven months after the Lumière brothers astonished audiences in Paris, moving pictures arrived in Bombay. Few could have imagined that the novelty shown at Watson’s Hotel would evolve into the world's most prolific film industry with Mumbai at its center. For much of the twentieth century, Indian cinema developed according to a...