Came across this review of Dhurandhar and thought it was worth sharing. Especially given the repeated comments on “bias and anti-Pakistan” from folks who haven’t even watched it.
I watched it this past weekend, and will try and find time to compile my thoughts on it as a comment on this post.
So a new trailer for a hindi acshun phillum dropped recently, and its another one of those that throws around the ‘based on true events’ tag for additional street cred. This time around though, there’s a bit of a twist. The plot apparently centers around the Lyari Gang wars in Karachi, with some additional fictional tempering of course.
Unsurprisingly, this will elicit a whole gamut of reactions from either side of the Radcliffe line, especially due west. The preview is unusually long, and somewhat unsurprisingly filled with shocking violence – the recent success of movies like Kill and Animal were bound to result in a race to ever-increasingly levels of ‘ketchup’ and fireworks. But apart from that, at least to me, didn’t seem very novel or interesting. I am mildly curious about the world building that the movie manages to pull off.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Netflix series Heeramandi is another example of this phenomenon. Where the Indian movie industry is accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ and telling a story that is “Pakistani, and not Indian”. With that one, as much as I am… unimpressed with Bhansali’s output – I view him more as a choreographer, less of a filmmaker, one who is far more successful at spectacle, not so much with cinema – I still think that the stories of the subcontinent should be accessible to all. Lahore after all, especially pre-partition Lahore is as much a legacy of Ganga Ram as it is of the Mughal Empire, or the Sikh, for that matter.
This time around however, the setting isn’t historical or pre-partition. Is there an argument to be made that this is “cultural appropriation”?
For me, more than anything, its yet another missed opportunity. In an alternate timeline, a movie like this would have been a golden opportunity for Pakistani actors to get visibility on a much larger Indian stage, and the quality of the output could have been immeasurably raised with behind-the-scenes contributions – production design, location and language expertise, to name a few.
Somewhere down the line, if things finally start reverting to ‘normal’, perhaps future projects like these will incorporate Pakistani participation and be better for it.
#Dhurandhar's real life characters & their onscreen depictions! pic.twitter.com/wdM81tJmyd
— Filmynews (@filmynewsnetwrk) November 19, 2025
10 years ago a few collaborators and I set out to make a film about the Lyari gangsters and drug mafia, couldn鈥檛 raise a Rs locally because a film 80% in Balochi won鈥檛 sell, approached Netflix who said Pakistani content not needed, the Twitter page is from 10 years ago too pic.twitter.com/p6LeyyFUEO
— Faisal Rafi (@faisalrafi) November 20, 2025
“It was not the best of times , it was the worst of times , it was not the season of light , it was the season of darkness , it was not the spring of hope , it was the winter of despair ”聽 I am talking about the 2020-2021 period when the world was battling Covid.. Like the rest of the world I too was stuck in my house , hearing bad news after other and trying to put on a brave face .聽 Cricket briefly for a few months , the great India tour of Australia ending with the great heist at Gabba gave us moments of great joy but such events were few and far in between.
It was in this background that , for my motley set of聽 old classmates and fellow “Cricket Tragics” as we called ourselves had a blast , thanks聽 to聽 Bansi ( Ajay Bansiwal)聽 one of our founding members聽 , who took us through a masterclass of World Cinema. He is a movie buff , one of the lucky few whose day job also involves movies and he has a treasure trove of great world movies – that were non English and Non Indian Language and gave us a sampling of great movies across various languages – Korean , Scandinavian , European and such.聽 These were not “High Brow” art movies , in the situation that we were with near and dear and friend and colleagues all suffering , all of us needed some escapist fantasy without compromising on our aesthetics. So the movies Bansi recommended were not sad or serious movies even though they took upon real and serious issues but always in a entertaining “masala” way or as a black comedy. These are all as Desi or Indian as movies can be only in languages and cultures that are vastly different from us. Sort of gives us the reaffirmation that human emotions are rather universal聽 !
In this podcast , Bansi and I talk about 15-20 such movies in no particular order of priority – the only common theme being , we enjoyed watching all of these possibly the most. These range from hard core violent Revenge movies to Slow Burn Crime Thrillers set in Argentina to absurdist black comedies and some picture perfect French work of art movies ! We have tried not to share spoilers in most cases and hope to hook you enough to make you search for these movies and have as much fun seeing them and discussing them as we had .聽 These prove that a good yarn well narrated is always engrossing whatever language it be in or the culture or country it is based in !
The Movies discussed are
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance –聽 Korean
Oldboy –聽 Korean
Lady Vengeance – Korean
Memories of murder – Korean
Barking dogs never bite聽 – Korean
I saw the devil – Korean
Welcome to Dongmakdol –聽 Korean
Secretly Greatly – Korean
In China they eat dogs – Danish
Adam鈥檚 apples聽 – Danish
Department Q series -Danish
The Alzheimer case聽 – Dutch聽 – Belgian Movie
Micmacs –聽 French
Welcome to the Sticks –聽 French
The band鈥檚 visit聽 – Arabic/Hebrew –聽 Israeli Movie
Marshland聽 – Spanish
Nine Queens –聽 Spanish – Argentinean Movie
Killing Cabos聽 – Spanish聽 Mexican Movie
Two rabbits聽 – Portuguese – Brazilian Movie
The man who copied聽 – Portuguese –聽 Brazilian Movie
