BBC Audio Rebel writer: the Indian author who questioned everything
This programme contains references to suicide.
Presenter: Asya Fouks
Producer: June Christie
Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707
(Photo: Banu Mushtaq, winner of the International Booker prize 2025. Credit:)
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Daily Mail
6 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Hundreds of Nigerian migrants are allowed into Britain after using visa scheme for authors, poets and storytellers
Hundreds of Nigerian migrants are cheating the system by using a visa scheme meant for authors and other literary creatives. They have made the most applications for the scheme, which also covers poets, oral storytellers and creators of graphic novels and comics. Those who are successful are able to bring their family into the UK as dependents and stay for up to five years at a time. The Nigerian migrants have also been the most successful in their applications, endorsed by the government quango Arts Council England, which can review and bolster applications for 'Global Talent' visas. This includes those with exceptional talents in music, theatre and dance and those applying are expected to prove their skills. Nigerians have put in 125 applications to the literature category over the past five years - more than double the 61 received from the US and far more than nations like Australia, Canada and New Zealand combined. Of those, 70 were rejected, and 54 were endorsed – more than any other country represented in official figures. The number of Global Talent visa applications being submitted from Nigeria has risen by 2,225 per cent since 2019. There were just 12 applications in 2019, but this rose to 279 in 2024, figures from The Telegraph revealed. Across that entire period, Nigerians made 729 applications across the Global Talent categories in dance, fashion, music, film and TV, theatre, combined arts, and visual arts. They came second to the US who submitted 977. However, Nigeria had the lowest number of endorsements after Ghana, with just 59 per cent. Russia have submitted 725 applications, china had 492, Australia with 233 and India with 160. Since 2019, more than 5,000 applications have been made across all nationalities, with 3,600 endorsed by the Arts Council. Immigration has reached record number for illegal and legal arrivals, as Labour face mounting pressures to curb the soaring number of migrants. The Home Office has not revealed how many of these endorsements then lead to visas being signed off.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
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Indian film company to rerelease romantic drama with AI ‘happy ending'
An Indian film company is rereleasing a 2013 romantic drama with an alternate artificial intelligence ending without the involvement of its director, in what could be the first instance of its kind in global cinema. Raanjhanaa, a Hindi-language film about the doomed romance between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman, will return to cinemas on 1 August under its Tamil-language title Ambikapathy. The film's original tragic ending will be replaced by a 'happy' one. Pradeep Dwivedi, the chief executive of Eros Media Group, defended its decision, saying technological innovation was part of the company's long-term creative and commercial vision. He said the alteration was an 'exploratory baby step' and confirmed that Eros was 'significantly evaluating' its library of more than 3,000 releases for similar AI treatments. 'If the technology allows us to do something and we can do something good with it, why not?' he said. 'There has to be a symbiotic understanding of what the technology allows, what the creative process can foster, and what the audience accepts.' The rerelease has drawn strong criticism from the film's director, Aanand L Rai, who said he learned of the move through media reports. 'I'm heartbroken that this is the future we're heading toward, where intent and authorship are disposable,' Rai told the Press Trust of India. 'All I can do is dissociate myself from such a reckless and dystopian experiment.' He said his team had contacted the Indian Film and Television Directors' Association and was exploring legal options. Neither he nor the guild responded to the Guardian's request for comment at the time of publication. The film starred the Tamil actor Dhanush and the Bollywood actor Sonam Kapoor as the star-crossed interfaith couple, one of whom dies in the original ending. Eros's catalogue includes Indian classics such as Sholay, Mother India, Om Shanti Om, and Bajirao Mastani. Its streaming service, Eros Now, hosts more than 11,000 digital titles. Dwivedi said Ambikapathy was produced entirely in-house with human supervision, and was being presented as an optional alternative rather than a replacement of the original film. Posters for the rerelease describe the ending as AI-powered, although Eros declined to confirm whether similar disclaimers will appear within the film itself. Dwivedi said the director's criticisms were 'emotional' and omitted relevant legal context. He pointed to an ongoing corporate dispute between Eros and Colour Yellow Productions, the studio co-founded by Rai. In an email to the Guardian, Colour Yellow's chief operating officer, Harini Lakshminarayan, said the company's partnership with Eros ended 'some time ago' due to operational challenges. 'To call this a 'respectful creative reinterpretation' while excluding the very people who made the film over a decade ago is deeply contradictory,' she wrote. She said the incident underscored 'the urgent need for fair, transparent protocols' on the use of AI, especially with archival material. 'If a finished film can be altered and rereleased without the director's knowledge, it sends out a clear and very troubling message – that the film-maker's voice is dispensable.' The film critic Sucharita Tyagi said: 'Most directors in India don't even own the rights to their films,' referencing examples such as Vasan Bala's Peddlers, which Eros International has still not released to the public after acquiring Indian distribution rights in 2012. 'If they decide to AI alter Peddlers and then release it, then it's a different film altogether.' The release has also raised questions about how the film's new 'happy ending' may reinterpret its interfaith storyline, a sensitive topic in India's political and cultural landscape. 'The film works because these are people trying to defy social norms,' said Tyagi. 'To now decide what a 'happy ending' looks like, 13 years later, is scary.' Ambikapathy is scheduled to open before Rai's latest feature, Tere Ishk Mein, also starring Dhanush and due for release in November. Rai has described the new film previously as being 'from the world of Raanjhanaa' but not a sequel. Eros, which holds the rights to Raanjhanaa, has denied any connection between the two projects. The rerelease comes amid growing experimentation with AI across the global film industry. In Hollywood, AI has been used for voice cloning, dubbing and visual effects, including accent enhancement in The Brutalist and simulating the voice of Anthony Bourdain in the 2021 documentary Roadrunner. Concerns about AI-generated scripts and the use of actors' likenesses were key issues in the 2023 writers' and actors' strikes.
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- The Guardian
Russia has also declared war on literature. Look at what's happening and be warned
'Manuscripts don't burn,' the protagonist of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita is told. This maxim is voiced by Satan, in reference to the Master's destroyed opus. Having restored it, the devil punishes the man who tipped off the police about 'illegal literature' kept in the Master's flat, so as to move there himself. Bulgakov didn't have to make this up. Surrounded by snitches, he managed to survive the Great Terror of the 1930s, as did his books. The Master and Margarita, on which he worked until his death in 1940, was first published uncensored in the USSR in 1973. In the early 1990s, censorship was officially lifted in Russia. For a while, one could publish almost anything, but now literature has again become a target of oppression. Things have become particularly dire since 2022, the year Russia invaded Ukraine and criminalised 'LGBT propaganda' among adults. In 2023 another bill was passed, outlawing the 'international LGBT public movement' as extremist. These laws are now being deployed in Russia's war on its book industry. Earlier this year, Russian police, armed with a list containing 48 titles, raided several bookshops, ordering the staff to remove copies of the books on the list. Administrative proceedings were launched and fines issued. In May, 10 people affiliated with Eksmo, the country's largest publishing corporation, were detained in Moscow. Three of them – Pavel Ivanov, Dmitry Protopopov and Artyom Vakhlyaev – were charged with 'organising activities of an extremist organisation', that is, distributing LGBTQ+-themed books. They remain under house arrest and face up to 12 years in prison. One of the books used as evidence in the case is Pioneer Summer, a bestselling novel by Elena Malisova and Katerina Sylvanova that was published in 2021 by Popcorn Books (a Moscow-based imprint now part-owned by Eksmo). Over the past three years, it has provoked outrage, particularly among Russian politicians, despite being anything but steamy: the teenage protagonists of this gay love story never go beyond kissing. At any rate, its runaway success was part of the driver for the Kremlin's crackdown. Other titles that had to be withdrawn from sale include Russian editions of Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation and Olivia Laing's Everybody, books that discuss homosexuality, though hardly in an extremist way. It's not just LGBTQ+-related topics, however loosely defined, that are deemed incendiary. Felix Sandalov, the director of StraightForward – an international project he cofounded to promote uncensored literature about Russia – told me about other taboos. They include comparisons between Stalinism and Nazism, unfavourable mentions of the Russian Orthodox church and, of course, any insufficiently patriotic takes on the current war in Ukraine. Prohibitions keep multiplying. One piece of legislation will criminalise 'propaganda' promoting childfree lifestyles. There are also plans to crack down on what Russian legislators call an 'international Satanism movement'. If that happens, Bulgakov's novel might disappear from the shelves again. The result of Russia's latest assault on free speech is a book industry in turmoil. Everyone is scared, several insiders told me, asking not to be named. The approach taken by the authorities – to keep people guessing what's allowed and what's not – appears to be an efficient intimidation strategy. Nevertheless, working under growing scrutiny, publishers have been devising countermeasures. Sandalov, formerly the editorial director of Individuum (another Moscow-based imprint in which Eksmo recently bought a 51% stake), recalls how some of its authors were registered as 'foreign agents' following the extension, in 2021, of another repressive law. 'Initially we could still publish [these authors] provided we observed the labelling rules,' he says. While doing so, they found a witty way to partially circumvent the obligatory 'produced by a foreign agent' warning by blurring it. Another clever move was their cover of Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War, with its visual evocation of the letter Z, the symbol of Russia's military aggression. The anti-war graffiti it inspired can be found in many cities. With the prospect of criminal persecution looming large, however, fighting the censors is becoming too dangerous. Victoria, a publishing professional with links to the Russian book market, told me independent publishers are dropping any problematic subjects and instead branching out into new areas, such as Asian cultures and art history. She sees this as 'a form of ideological opposition and survival in this totalitarian nightmare'. Expecting the screws to be tightened further, some publishers compile their own lists of titles to be removed from shops. Such self-censorship is no doubt convenient to busy law enforcers. 'In the 2010s,' Victoria says, 'it was widely believed that … the authorities in this country don't read books.' Whether they've since become avid and attentive readers is unclear. Their decision to ban Leslie Kern's Feminist City – a study of urbanism – might be explained by their kneejerk tendency to ascribe LGBTQ+ connotations to the word 'feminism'. As for Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet and Walter Benjamin's One-Way Street, these works could only be blacklisted by someone who didn't understand them at all. But it's not just the state wielding its own apparatus to further restrict freedom of expression. Ordinary readers also do their bit for law and order. Police are sometimes alerted to suspicious books by vigilantes who post offending passages on social media. The existence of informants is not surprising. I dislike a book, I complain about it, it gets banned; thus, my voice has been heard. In a country with no democratic mechanisms left, reporting something objectionable is the only way for an individual to participate in public life. Any community where people feel politically disengaged – as they increasingly do in the UK and across the world – risks descending into the same madness. Censorship always relies on self-censorship, be it in Russia or in the west, where (to give but one example) venues cancel shows by artists protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza. Speaking your mind is, naturally, fraught with more serious consequences in totalitarian states than in those where censorship is mostly limited to economic measures, but the gap is closing. Whatever your government's human rights record, freedom of expression should never be taken for granted. Unlike the fireproof manuscripts in Bulgakov's fiction, real-life books, once banned, can be destroyed for ever. As the repressive campaign continues, pre-emptive self-censorship in Russia is gaining momentum. Last month Eksmo opened an exhibition at the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation – the federal agency that brought the case against the corporation's employees – to celebrate 'heroes past and present', from Soviet secret policemen to those involved in the making of 'the great legend', as one of the books on display refers to the Ukraine war. Published with the support of the ministry of defence, it features Stalin's name on page one. On page seven there is an error: the author got the month of Russia's 2022 invasion wrong. The hagiographers of this war are as inept as those who wage it. Anna Aslanyan is a journalist and translator, and the author of Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? 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