EXCLUSIVE: Amid UAE ban and PIL controversy, Sanjay Dutt starrer Aakhri Sawal heads for special screening at Rashtrapati Bhavan today

In a major development surrounding one of the year’s most talked-about films, Sanjay Dutt starrer Aakhri Sawal is set to hold a special screening at Rashtrapati Bhavan today, Bollywood Hungama has exclusively learned. The screening comes amid mounting controversy around the film. Over the past few days, Aakhri Sawal has been making headlines after reports surfaced of the film being banned in the UAE, while a PIL was also reportedly filed against the project in India. Despite the storm surrounding the film, the makers appear unfazed and are moving ahead with an aggressive rollout strategy. Sources close to the development reveal that preparations for the Rashtrapati Bhavan screening have been underway quietly over the last few days, though details regarding the guest list and attendees remain under wraps. Directed as a hard-hitting social drama, Aakhri Sawal features an ensemble cast led by Sanjay Dutt, the film has already generated substantial curiosity because of its subject matter ...

Rojek review – unsettlingly intimate portraits of Islamic State militants

Documentary collects sequence of interviews with prisoners, not all repentant, alongside footage of war-blasted Syrian Kurdistan

Here is an astringent, devastating and truly extraordinary film that is hard work to watch, but entirely worth it. Rojek probes the roots and fallen leaves of the Syrian civil war, a conflict the western media has practically forgotten as news of Ukraine and Gaza-Israel-Yemen dominates international reporting. Director Zayne Akyol, heard off-camera throughout, interviews members of Islamic State, now being held in high security prisons by the Syrian Democratic Forces, about their lives, with some recalling more innocent days when they hunted goldfinches to sell in markets or liked Canadian pop music. Many recount how they were recruited into IS by cells in local mosques in assorted countries – Germany, say, or Saudi Arabia – and came to have positions both high-ranking and menial in the organisation in the part of Syria with a dense Kurdish population.

In the film’s present, some are still unrepentant, believers that they fought honourably in a holy war; others see things differently and are riven with regrets. Some are women who recall their time of service to IS as the happiest days of their lives. In stately procession, each person speaks straight to the camera in almost disconcerting closeup, and however repugnant some of the things they say might be, it’s impossible to not recognise and see most of them as broken human beings.

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