April 7–15

BAREILLY KI BARFI Sat, April 7, 3:00 p.m. Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari (AMMA KANAKKU, NIL BATTEY SANNATA) took home the Best Director prize at the recent Filmfare Awards for this charming romantic comedy, based on the French novel "The Ingredients of Love." Replacing Paris with Bareilly, a small town in in Uttar Pradesh, the film follows Bitti (Kriti Sanon, DILWALE, HEROPANTI), a free spirit and a bit of a bohemian misfit. Bitti works at the electricity board, is a casual smoker, watches English movies and loves to breakdance — none of which are helping her parents to find her a suitable groom. Feeling pressured to change her lifestyle and start thinking about marriage, Bitti resolves to skip town completely, but when she stumbles upon a novel called "Bareily Ki Barfi" at the train station, she's surprised to find that the female protagonist is exactly like her. Dropping the idea of running away, Bitti returns home in search of the book's mysterious author, Pritam Vidrohi (Rajkummar Rao, NEWTON). With the help of the local printing-press owner Chirag Dubey (Ayushmann Khurrana, SHUBH MANGAL SAAVDHAN, VICKY DONOR), Bitti sets out in search of true love — and finds much more than she bargained for.. DIR Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari; SCR Nitesh Tiwari, Shreyas Jain, from the novel "The Ingredients of Love" by Nicolas Barreau; PROD Renu Ravi Chopra, Vineet Jain. India, 2017, color, 123 min. In Hindi with English subtitles. NOT RATED

2018 Oscar® Selection, India NEWTON Sat, April 7, 8:00 p.m. As India, the world's largest democracy, braces itself for another general election — with nine million polling booths, more than 800 million voters and a budget of $5 billion — rookie government clerk Newton Kumar (Rajkummar Rao, BAREILLY KI BARFI) is entrusted with a deceptively simple task: conducting elections in a remote village in the jungles of central India. The bushes teem with Communist guerrillas, who have been waging a decades-long war against the state, even as the indigenous tribal inhabitants of the area live without any access to mainland amenities. Conducting "free and fair" elections in a minefield like this is no child's play, as Newton learns over the course of one eventful day. However, unfazed by the cynicism and danger all around him, Newton is determined to do his duty. But, as they say in the jungle, "The more things change, the worse they will get." Like beloved political satires VEEP and IN THE LOOP, Amit Masurkar's (SULEMANI KEEDA) sophomore feature is both timely and scathing, while remaining darkly comic, razor sharp and entertaining throughout. DIR/SCR Amit Masurkar; SCR Mayank Tewari; PROD Manish Mundra. India, 2017, color, 106 min. In Hindi with English subtitles. NOT RATED

SECRET SUPERSTAR Sun, April 8, 2:30 p.m. Advait Chandan's debut feature is a charming mother-daughter story for the YouTube age, which broke box office records in India and was praised for its rare focus on a young female protagonist. You could even call it India's LADY BIRD. Fourteen-year-old Insia (Zaira Wasim, DANGAL) dreams of becoming a singer, but her conservative and overbearing father Farookh (Raj Arjun, RAEES) doesn't see this as an apt aspiration for a young Muslim woman. When Insia's mother Najma (Meher Vij, BAJRANGI BHAIJAAN) surreptitiously buys her a laptop, the budding composer begins secretly recording and posting her songs online (in disguise, of course), gaining overnight internet fame and catching the attention of Shakti Kumar (not-so-secret superstar Aamir Khan at his best), an eccentric Simon Cowell-eqsue music producer who invites her to record a song in Mumbai. Facing continued opposition from Farookh, both mother and daughter must find a way to break free, follow their hearts and change their lives forever. DIR/SCR Advait Chandan; PROD Aamir Khan, Allen Liu, Kiran Rao, Prasad Shetty. India, 2017, color, 150 min. In Hindi with English subtitles. NOT RATED

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AFI Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Rd, Downtown Silver Spring

India's Mumbai-based Hindi-language film industry, Bollywood has become synonymous with action, romance, comedy, music, dance, exotic locales, massive budgets, elaborate sets and ultra-glamourous multihyphenate megastars — often all within in the same film. In celebration of one the world's most prolific and inventive film industries, we showcase a handpicked selection of recent hits that highlight current trends, rising stars, veteran performers and topical touchstones in popular Indian cinema. All films are in Hindi with English subtitles.

ITTEFAQ (2017) [COINCIDENCE] Sun, April 8, 8:30 p.m. Inspired by the eponymous 1969 film — a favorite of Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan, who produced this incarnation — ITTEFAQ is a gripping modern whodunit. Dev (Akshaye Khanna, DIL CHAHTA HAI; GANDHI, MY FATHER) is a police officer investigating a double murder case with only two witnesses — both of whom are also prime suspects. The suspects — Vikram (Sidharth Malhotra, EK VILLAIN, STUDENT OF THE YEAR), an acclaimed writer, and Maya (Sonakshi Sinha, DABANGG), a young homemaker — have very different stories about the fateful night, and both stories seem true. Torn between the two versions of events, Dev will not rest until he finds out what really happened. ITTEFAQ marks the feature debut of filmmaker Abhay Chopra, grandnephew of Yash Chopra, who directed the 1969 film, and grandson of B.R. Chopra, who produced it. DIR/SCR Abhay Chopra; SCR Shreyas Jain, Nikhil Mehrotra; PROD Renu Ravi Chopra, Hiroo Johan, Karan Johar, Gauri Khan. India, 2017, color, 105 min. In Hindi with English subtitles. NOT RATED TOILET: EK PREM KATHA [TOILET: A LOVE STORY] Sat, April 14, 2:30 p.m. Go-getter Keshav (megastar Akshay Kumar, who also stars in PADMAN) woos liberal thinker Jaya (Bhumi Pednekar, DUM LAGA KE HAISHA, SHUBH MANGAL SAAVDHAN), a woman from his neighboring village in Uttar Pradesh. Keshav comes from a traditional family, but is nonetheless able to convince his father to allow him to propose. They marry, but once the newlyweds cross the threshold, Jaya discovers that Keshav does not have a toilet in his home. Keshav, who submits to cultural norms, suggests that his new bride can just defecate outside when the time comes — which leads the modern-minded Jaya to file for a divorce. Fearing he will lose her, Keshav desperately sets out on a mission to win back his love by standing up to the age-old traditions and values of India. A social satire that also promotes the Indian government's current campaigns to improve sanitary conditions, especially in rural areas, TOILET is a mirror of changing cultural tides in sanitation, part of a deeper process of promoting women's rights as a whole.DIR Shree Narayan Singh; SCR Siddharth Singh, Garima Wahal; PROD Shital Bhatia, Arjun N. Kapoor. India, 2017, color, 155 min. In Hindi with English subtitles. NOT RATED

PAD MAN Sat, April 14, 8:15 p.m. Inspired by the life of Indian entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham, who revolutionized the manufacture of the low-cost sanitary napkin in India, PADMAN — like TOILET: A LOVE STORY — takes a socially conscious approach to the traditional Bollywood comedy, with hilarious and thought-provoking results. Lakshmi (Akshay Kumar, TOILET: A LOVE STORY), a newly married welder from a rural village in Tamil Nadu, is shocked to discover that his wife Gayatri (Radhika Apte, BADLAPUR, MANJHI: THE MOUNTAIN MAN) uses only a cloth during her periods. Unable to afford a branded sanitary pad, Laksmi decides to make one himself — and thus, starts an epic journey of experimentation and taboo-crushing discovery. DIR/SCR R. Balki; SCR Swanand Kirkire, from the story "The Sanitary Man of Sacred Land" by Twinkle Khanna; PROD Twinkle Khanna. India, 2018, color, 140 min. In Hindi with English subtitles. RATED PG-13 MUKKABAAZ [THE BRAWLER] Sun, April 15, 2:00 p.m. Vital, insightful and thoroughly cinematic, Anurag Kashyap's (GANGS OF WASSEYPUR) THE BRAWLER follows in the tradition of the all-time great boxing films, with a boldly Indian spin. Shravan (Vineet Kumar Singh, BOMBAY TALKIES, GANGS OF WASSEYPUR, the upcoming DAAS DEV) is a lower-caste boxer with a tempered edge, struggling to leave his mark and making the case with his fists that he deserves a chance to compete. His career is threatened after he delivers a nasty right hook to the face of employer Bhagwan (Jimmy Shergill) — the local kingpin, and the top boxing promoter in the region, who subsequently does everything he can to humiliate Shravan and stop him from ascending up the ranks, including preventing him from pursuing Sunaina (Zoya Hussain, in a stunning debut), the woman he's in love with. But what Bhagwan has been an underdog all his life, and will stop at nothing to go all the way to the Indian National Boxing Championship. DIR/SCR/PROD Anurag Kashyap; SCR Ranjan Chandel, Prasoon Mishra, Mukti Singh Srinet, Vineet Kumar Singh, K.D. Satyam; PROD Madhu Mantena, Vikramaditya Motwane, Anand L. Rai. India, 2017, color, 153 min. In Hindi with English subtitles. NOT RATED SHUBH MANGAL SAAVDHAN Sun, April 15, 8:00 p.m. In this remake of his acclaimed 2013 Tamil-language comedy, R.S. Prasanna tackles the taboo topic of "gent's problems" in India, with hilarious and heartfelt results. Mudit Sharma (Ayushmann Khurrana, BAREILLY KI BARFI) is a sweet young man with a stable job who feels like he's struck gold when he meets the no-nonsense Sugandha (Bhumi Pedneckar, TOILET: A LOVE STORY) and they instantly hit it off. They're soon engaged, but when a premarital rendezvous reveals that Mudit suffers from erectile dysfunction, word gets out, and the entire wedding party, including both sets of parents, are spun into a panic that nobody knows how to talk about, but which everyone feels obliged to fix. SHUBH MANGAL SAAVDHAN is both a daring exploration of masculine bravado and a truly crowd-pleasing treat. DIR/SCR R.S. Prasanna; SCR Hitesh Kewalya; PROD Krishika Lulla, Anand L. Rai. India, 2017, color, 119 min. In Hindi with English subtitles. NOT RATED

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