India's official Oscar entry, which failed to make the cut, wins big at major Bollywood awards show
JAIPUR: The film that was submitted as India's official Oscar entry but failed to make the final list of nominees has swept the International Indian Film Academy Awards, which recognize outstanding work in the country's film industry.Director Kiran Rao's critically acclaimed 'Laapataa Ladies' — renamed 'Lost Ladies' for its Oscar campaign — emerged as the biggest winner at the 2025 IIFA Awards, bagging 10 wins, including best picture and best direction.The 2023 comedy is about two veiled brides who are accidentally swapped during a train ride, and tackles issues of patriarchy and gender roles, a shift from decades of male-centered mainstream Indian movies.'It's a rare privilege to win an award for a film like 'Laapataa Ladies.' It's been a wonderful night. It's a rare privilege to make a film like this,' Rao said in her acceptance speech.Rao's film — a rare departure from most Bollywood films, which typically feature song-and-dance routines, violence and melodrama — also won in categories for best story, best screenplay and best actress in a leading role.The annual ceremony of IIFA began in the western city of Jaipur on Saturday and concluded Sunday.Indian cinema's most recognizable names took part in the glitzy event and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and actor Shahid Kapoor were among those who performed at the ceremony. The event was hosted by veteran director and producer Karan Johar and actor Kartik Aaryan.The awards show also presents an opportunity for Indian celebrities to showcase their fashion, and this year was no exception. Notable figures such as Madhuri Dixit, Katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor Khan displayed their fashion choices on the green carpet.
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Saudi Gazette
21-05-2025
- Saudi Gazette
India's Banu Mushtaq scripts history with International Booker win
NEW DELHI — Indian writer-lawyer-activist Banu Mushtaq has scripted history by winning the International Booker prize for the short story anthology, Heart Lamp. It is the first book written in the Kannada language, which is spoken in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, to win the prestigious prize. The stories in Heart Lamp were translated into English by Deepa Bhasthi. Featuring 12 short stories written by Mushtaq over three decades from 1990 to 2023, Heart Lamp poignantly captures the hardships of Muslim women living in southern India. In her acceptance speech, Mushtaq thanked readers for letting her words wander into their hearts. "This book was born from the belief that no story is ever small; that in the tapestry of human experience, every thread holds the weight of the whole," she said. "In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other's minds, if only for a few pages," she added. Bhasthi, who became the first Indian translator to win an International Booker, said that she hoped that the win would encourage more translations from and into Kannada and other South Asian languages. Mushtaq's win comes off the back of Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand — translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell — winning the prize in 2022. Her body of work is well-known among book lovers, but the Booker International win has shone a bigger spotlight on her life and literary oeuvre, which mirrors many of the challenges the women in her stories face, brought on by religious conservatism and a deeply patriarchal society. It is this self-awareness that has, perhaps, helped Mushtaq craft some of the most nuanced characters and plotlines. "In a literary culture that rewards spectacle, Heart Lamp insists on the value of attention — to lives lived at the edges, to unnoticed choices, to the strength it takes simply to persist. That is Banu Mushtaq's quiet power," a review in the Indian Express newspaper says about the book. Mushtaq grew up in a small town in the southern state of Karnataka in a Muslim neighborhood and like most girls around her, studied the Qur'an at school. But her father, a government employee, wanted more for her and at the age of eight, enrolled her in a convent school where the medium of instruction was the state's official language — Kannada. Mushtaq worked hard to become fluent in Kannada, but this alien tongue would become the language she chose for her literary expression. She began writing while still in school and chose to go to college even as her peers were getting married and raising children. It would take several years before Mushtaq was published and it happened during a particularly challenging phase in her life. Her short story appeared in a local magazine a year after she had married a man of her choosing at the age of 26, but her early marital years were also marked by conflict and strife — something she openly spoke of, in several interviews. In an interview with Vogue magazine, she said, "I had always wanted to write but had nothing to write (about) because suddenly, after a love marriage, I was told to wear a burqa and dedicate myself to domestic work. I became a mother suffering from postpartum depression at 29". In another interview to The Week magazine, she spoke of how she was forced to live a life confined within the four walls of her house. Then, a shocking act of defiance set her free. "Once, in a fit of despair, I poured white petrol on myself, intending to set myself on fire. Thankfully, he [the husband] sensed it in time, hugged me, and took away the matchbox. He pleaded with me, placing our baby at my feet saying, 'Don't abandon us'," she told the magazine. In Heart Lamp, her female characters mirror this spirit of resistance and resilience. "In mainstream Indian literature, Muslim women are often flattened into metaphors — silent sufferers or tropes in someone else's moral argument. Mushtaq refuses both. Her characters endure, negotiate, and occasionally push back — not in ways that claim headlines, but in ways that matter to their lives," according to a review of the book in The Indian Express newspaper. Mushtaq went on to work as a reporter in a prominent local tabloid and also associated with the Bandaya movement — which focussed on addressing social and economic injustices through literature and activism. After leaving journalism a decade later, she took up work as a lawyer to support her family. In a storied career spanning several decades, she has published a copious amount of work; including six short story collections, an essay collection and a novel. But her incisive writing has also made her a target of hate. In an interview to The Hindu newspaper, she spoke about how in the year 2000, she received threatening phone calls after she expressed her opinion supporting women's right to offer prayer in mosques. A fatwa — a legal ruling as per Islamic law — was issued against her and a man tried to attack her with a knife before he was overpowered by her husband. But these incidents did not faze Mushtaq, who continued to write with fierce honesty. "I have consistently challenged chauvinistic religious interpretations. These issues are central to my writing even now. Society has changed a lot, but the core issues remain the same. Even though the context evolves, the basic struggles of women and marginalized communities continue," she told The Week magazine. Over the years Mushtaq's writings have won numerous prestigious local and national awards including the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award and the Daana Chintamani Attimabbe Award. In 2024, the translated English compilation of Mushtaq's five short story collections published between 1990 and 2012 — Haseena and Other Stories — won the PEN Translation Prize. — BBC
Saudi Gazette
06-05-2025
- Saudi Gazette
Shah Rukh Khan makes Met Gala debut in Sabyasachi
NEW YORK — Shah Rukh Khan is one of the world's most famous men. And yet, strutting down the Met Gala carpet still gave the Bollywood star jitters. Khan, known as SRK to fans, made his Met debut in understated style, donning a floor-length black wool coat designed by Indian designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee. The look was complemented with several bold accessories, including a large sparkling 'K' dangling from a chain and a gem-encrusted tiger head cane. To combat his nerves, perhaps — Khan told Vogue livestream hosts Ego Nwodim and Teyana Taylor that he's 'very shy' and typically skips red carpets — he asked Mukherjee to stick to his style staples. 'I told Sabya I only wear black and white, but what we designed for me is what I'm most comfortable in,' he said. 'That's how I think it should be.' The star of more than 100 movies, Khan's arrival on the Met Gala carpet has been a long time coming. But Mukherjee said that it was fitting that Khan debuts the same year the event celebrates Black designers and the legacy of Black dandyism, a fashion movement as steeped in politics as it is in impeccable style. 'When you get a man like this on the red carpet, especially when it's 'Black dandy,' representation is the most important thing,' Mukherjee said. 'We wanted to represent Shah Rukh Khan as Shah Rukh Khan, and nobody else.'Mukherjee, too, is a global superstar: His label Sabyasachi's glamorous gowns and saris regularly appear on Bollywood stars, and earlier this year he said he wants to make Sabyasachi 'India's first global luxury brand.' He recently celebrated his label's 25th anniversary, complete with a massive runway show with over 150 looks influenced by his West Bengal Khan as a first-time Met attendee was another star of Indian cinema: Diljit Dosanjh, a musician and actor revered for his work in Punjabi music and film. Like several celebrities this year, the performer wore a long cape, but his was embroidered with a map of Punjab. Nepali-American designer Prabal Gurung created his bejeweled maharaja-inspired ensemble, the New York Times reported. — CNN
Al Arabiya
06-05-2025
- Al Arabiya
Stars shine at Met Gala, showcasing Black dandyism
The brightest stars in Hollywood, music, sports and fashion hit the red carpet Monday for the Met Gala, the extravagant Manhattan fundraiser that this year spotlights the subversive style of Black dandyism. The blockbuster night's theme explores the sharply tailored dandy aesthetic and its rich, complicated history. It also celebrates the opening of a corresponding exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute. But for the fashionistas, the Met Gala -- always the first Monday in May -- is simply one of the world's top red carpets with blinding star power. Oscar-nominated actor Colman Domingo and Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, two of the co-chairs of fashion's marquee event, were among the early arrivals alongside gala supremo Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue. Domingo paid tribute to the late Andre Leon Talley, Vogue's first Black creative director and one of fashion's towering figures, in a royal blue Valentino cape with a glittering white collar over a snazzy black and gold jacket and gray tweed trousers. Hamilton meanwhile wowed in a sharp cream suit and matching backwards cap, diamonds glittering in his ears, as well as on his lapel, cuffs and hands. And musician and designer Pharrell Williams, another co-chair, looked snappy in a short, pearl-encrusted white jacket and flared black tuxedo trousers. Tailored suits, bejeweled brooches and jaunty hats were de rigueur for the men. Among the women in attendance, actress Teyana Taylor definitely understood the assignment, arriving in a black suit with red pinstripes and matching huge red coat, the back fully pleated and 'Harlem Rose' embossed in the fabric. Rapper Doechii wore a logo-heavy Louis Vuitton cream shorts suit with burgundy accents, a cigar dangling between her lips. And actress Zendaya, always a huge hit at the gala, stunned in a slim white suit and dramatic brimmed hat -- perhaps some bridal chic now that she is engaged to Tom Holland? Still awaited was singer Rihanna, after she revealed a new baby bump ahead of the event. Her partner A$AP Rocky, a gala co-chair, confirmed the pregnancy on the carpet: 'I'm glad everybody's happy for us because we're definitely happy.' 'New sense of importance' The gala comes five years after the enormous anti-racist uprising of the Black Lives Matter movement, which pushed a number of cultural institutions in the United States to grapple with their representation of race and diversity. This Met theme is years in the making but now coincides with Donald Trump's recent efforts to quash institutional initiatives to promote diversity -- a push to keep culture and history defined on the Republican president's terms. The Met Gala and its exhibit, 'Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,' promises a sharp contrast to that notion, a deep dive into Black dandyism from the 18th century to today. 'Obviously, this exhibition was planned many years ago, and we didn't know what would be happening in the political arena, but it's taken on a new sense of importance and purpose,' Wintour told AFP. Subversion Guest curator and Barnard professor Monica Miller's book 'Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity' was the Met's inspiration. Her book details how dandyism was a style imposed on Black men in 18th century Europe, when well-dressed 'dandified' servants became a trend. But Black men throughout history subverted the concept as a means of cultivating power, transforming aesthetic and elegance into a means of identity establishment and social mobility. During the vibrant Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, men wore sharp suits and polished shoes as a show of defiance in racially segregated America. 'Superfine' is a rare Costume Institute exhibition to spotlight men and male fashion, and the first to focus on Black designers and artists. The Met Gala was first organized in 1948 and for decades was reserved for New York high society -- until Wintour transformed the party into a high-profile catwalk for the rich and famous in the 1990s. It remains a fundraiser for the Costume Institute. The famed Manhattan museum reported last year's edition raked in some $26 million.
