BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM
Genre
Dark Comedy, Drama and Romance
Running time
112 minutes
Year
2002
Language
English, Punjabi, Hindi and German
Country
United Kingdom, Germany and United States of America (USA)
Director
Gurinder Chadha
Bio
Producer
Gurinder Chadha, Deepak Nayar
Cast
Parminder Nagra, Keira Knightley, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Anupam Kher
Scriptwriter
Gurinder Chadha, Guljit Bindra
BILB is the story of Jess Bhambra who dreams for playing football liek her hero David Beckham while her mother dreams of her cooking perfect Indian dinner.
Jess is a great athlete but for her traditional mother she is a tomboy and far too masculine. Now she is 18 she has to give it all up and become a ‘good Indian girl’ that someone will want to marry.
For Jess she wants both. Why can’t she? So over a summer we follow her journey to Bend the rules, not break them, to traverse the complex world second generation British Indian girls to get what they want while keeping their parents happy too!
Other movies
SANTOSH
Director: Sandhya Suri
When Santosh’s husband, a policeman in a rural district in North India, is killed in a riot, the widow can only keep their home if she takes his job. Eager to succeed, she shows more determination than is usual among the misogynist male police when a low-caste girl is reported missing and then turns up dead. A charismatic senior woman officer, Inspector Sharma, is duly drafted in to head the murder investigation, becoming Santosh’s mentor. Success for women, however, generally means showing they can bend the rules as flagrantly as the men, where survival always comes at huge personal cost. A fascinating police procedural, focusing on the relationships within the force rather than crimes or culprits, the film is an investigation into deep-rooted systemic corruption.
AÏCHA
Director: Mehdi M. Barsaoui
Aya is the sole survivor of a bus crash on a mountain road. When she realises that nobody knows she is alive, she makes a snap decision to escape her dead-end village existence and become someone else. In thriving, liberal Tunis, she calls herself Amira, a thrilling change until one of those men is murdered and the investigating police start to question “Amira”’s sketchy life story. Fatma Sfar is vivid and immediately sympathetic as Aya/Amira, while narrative twists and nested details gradually reveal that she isn’t the only trickster with something to hide. Aicha was judged Best Mediterranean Film from the Academy of Fine Arts at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
LUMIÈRE, LE CINÉMA
Director: Thierry Frémaux
A contemporary film collating works shot by Louis and Auguste Lumiere from the earliest years of cinema, superbly preserved and restored by the Lumiere Institute in Lyon. Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux provides an informative commentary as toddlers squabble, a magician performs a trick and a train pulls into a station; the score is by Gabriel Faure, a composer favoured by the Lumiere brothers themselves. More than a hundred short films of 50 seconds each, provide a window both into ordinary life around the turn of the 19th century – not only in France but in places as far-flung as Japan and Algeria - and the wonder felt at the Lumieres’ astonishing invention, the cinematograph, a miracle whose magic continues.
In-Conversation with Kareena Kapoor
Director: Kareena Kapoor Khan
A prolific leading lady of Hindi cinema since 2000, Kareena Kapoor Khan is noted for her roles in a range of film genres—from romantic comedies to crime dramas.
