Muhammed Noushad

Re-watching Bheed on the fifth anniversary of the pandemic lockdown, Muhammed Noushad writes that Anubhav Sinha’s 2023 movie is a tribute to the massive humanitarian crisis of migrant exodus caused by the irresponsibly mismanaged lockdown.

As its compelling dedication states, “For those that we have lost; for those that we can still save,” Not Today strives to honour its message—that there is always someone to listen and support even if you are at the lowest edges of life-ending despair.

American Fiction bluntly satirises this fashionable zeitgeist and shatters its progressive myths, challenging the false pretensions of capitalism’s culture production-spanning the industries of publishing, awards, and filmmaking-that it's open to new, different voices from the margins and the underprivileged.

Enough reasons to watch. Gladly, Farhana is not a disappointment in terms of representation and aesthetics, to a large extent. At least it stays away from fooling around Muslim sexuality – often, stereotyping Muslim sexuality is a tool of otherisation. 

All That Breathes, a brilliantly researched and fabulously crafted movie, is a profound meditation on human-animal bonding, and the politics that shape it.

Muhammed Noushad spoke to Prof. Bernard Haykel on pressing questions of the contemporary West Asian politics while the latter was touring India recently.