Ram Gopal Varma calls Seedance 2.0 the “asteroid” set to brutally murder film industry’s “arrogance”: “This is actually the liberation of cinema”

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Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has stirred a fresh debate on the future of cinema, calling AI tool “Seedance 2.0” the “murderer of the film industry” while also describing it as a force of liberation. In a post shared on February 25, 2026, Varma argued that advanced AI filmmaking tools could dismantle the traditional structure of the movie business. Referring to blockbuster filmmaker S. S. Rajamouli, he wrote that directors like Rajamouli command massive budgets due to their proven creative vision and track record. However, he questioned how many equally talented storytellers across India never get access to funding or industry networks. According to Varma, tools like Seedance 2.0 have “kicked the gate down and set it on fire,” enabling creators from small towns to generate large-scale, cinematic visuals using descriptive prompts alone. He described it as “true democracy in motion,” suggesting that AI shifts power away from a select few and into the hands of the masses. Varma went furthe...
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Drift review – beautiful yet undercooked character study

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Sundance film festival: Cynthia Erivo stars as a west African migrant who befriends Alia Shawkat’s American émigré in this too-quiet character drama

Save for its few flashback moments of horrific, haunting trauma, Drift, the mostly quiet story of a west African migrant reeling from the unimaginable on a Greek resort isle, is easy on the eyes. Director Anthony Chen’s film, from a screenplay by Susanne Farrell and Alexander Maksik, gives harried aftermath the sheen of tranquil nobility, resilience hiding in plain sight – the crowd of barely clothed, languid white bodies dotting star Cynthia Erivo’s opening walk down the beach, the bleached yellow of the Mediterranean sun, the way Erivo’s Jacqueline slowly, carefully washes her one set of clothes. Even Jacqueline’s night ritual, arranging plastic bags of pebbles for a makeshift beach cave mattress, takes on the lulling rhythm of a reverie.

It’s a lot of compelling aesthetic, anchored at most turns by Erivo’s committed, tense performance, that like many a Sundance movie can only cover so much undercooked structure. Drift, based on Maksik’s 2013 novel A Marker to Measure Drift, relies on Jacqueline’s trauma-fragmented memory to unfold the story too slowly. For the first half hour, Jacqueline is mostly a cipher, scrounging for money via beachside foot massages by day, flitting through shadows and dodging bigoted police by night. We catch tantalizing snippets of her clearly suppressed past in too-short flashbacks – a time when she had long braids and a white British girlfriend (Honor Swinton Byrne), a time when she lived in England, a joyful moment with her privileged minister’s family in militarized Liberia. The script’s spareness – what year is it? How did Jacqueline get here? Why is she so alone? – provokes equal parts mystery and frustration.

Drift premiered at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution.

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