Star

Mayukh Sen is the author of Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (2025), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. He teaches film and television reporting and criticism at New York University and...

Nov 5, 2020 — Performances Whenever I think of the iconic Bengali actor Supriya Choudhury, the first thing I recall is not her face—with its high cheekbones and large, kohl-rimmed eyes that often drew comparisons to Sophia Loren’s—but her voice, disembodied, tearing through the...

Sep 13, 2019 — With The Cloud-Capped Star, Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak reinvented the melodrama. The story of a refugee family’s increasing dependence on self-sacrificing eldest daughter Neeta (Supriya Choudhury), the 1960 film makes innovative use of an array of striking techniques—including elliptical editing,...

Sep 10, 2019 — In this landmark melodrama, director Ritwik Ghatak channeled his grief over the destruction of his beloved homeland, Bengal, in the wake of the Partition of India.

Jul 14, 2026 — News of his “sudden and unexpected” passing has drawn a flood of appreciation and genuine affection.

Jul 14, 2026 — One of the funniest and most affecting scenes in 1970s Hollywood cinema is also one of the most quietly radical—no small feat in a decade of movies marked by wiggy experimentation, explosions of brutal and cathartic violence, and shaggy new...

Jul 10, 2026 — We’re celebrating the Harry Dean Stanton centennial, listening to Ross McElwee and Tsai Ming-liang, and revisiting the work of Bruce Conner.

Jul 6, 2026 — Karlovy Vary hosts the world premiere of a new restoration of the Czech director’s 1988 tragicomedy.

Jul 1, 2026 — Film at Lincoln Center rolls out a series of ten films probing the secrets and suspicions of a nation that seems perpetually on edge.

Jun 29, 2026 — In the run-up to the country’s 250th birthday, several venues are offering prompts for celebration and reflection.