Bhonsle

“After making headlines for a few months, the migrant ‘story’ has already slid off the front-pages. But we shouldn’t need a pandemic to show us just how vulnerable they are: the cities where they live and work for most of their lives remain hostile, and they can never really go back to the place they call home… The insider-outsider conflict in what used to be Bombay and is now Mumbai is a familiar one. Makhija’s choice of palette makes it seriously dark: overflowing drains, grungy toilets, slushy roads with sinister vans, and the powerful preying upon the meek.”

Rating: 2.5  stars | Full review

“One gets a sense from Makhija’s filmmaking that, at times, he tries too hard to make the viewer feel the force of systematic oppression. Perhaps it comes from deep-rooted experience, but the craft tends to appear a little gimmicky in its pursuit of immersiveness.”

| Full review

“The kind of film that will not let the sleeping dogs lie… Anger pulses through the slow-burning film… The gutters are, metaphorically, overflowing.”

Rating: 3.5 stars | Full review

“Bhonsle’s shift from an affecting character study to a raging retribution would feel awfully contrived coming from a lesser actor. But the pure grace and proportion in Manoj Bajpayee’s performance shows he knows his art inside out.”

Rating: 3.5 stars | Full review