Ahaan Panday to play gangster in Ali Abbas Zafar’s next, Jimmy Sheirgill joins cast: Report

Following the success of Saiyaara, breakout actor Ahaan Panday is set to step into a markedly different space with his second feature film. As per a report by Variety India, the actor will portray a gangster in filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar’s upcoming action-romance. The role signals a shift from Ahaan’s debut performance as a troubled musician dealing with past trauma in Saiyaara. For the new project, the actor has reportedly undergone intensive preparation that includes hand-to-hand combat and weapon training to align with the physical demands of the character’s aggressive screen presence. The report also states that Jimmy Shergill has joined the cast in a pivotal role. The film marks his return to a collaboration with Yash Raj Films after more than two decades. One of his most notable earlier associations with the banner remains Mohabbatein, in which he appeared alongside Shah Rukh Khan. Details about the storyline and other casting elements have not been officially confirmed at this...

Drift review – beautiful yet undercooked character study

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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