TRENDING STORIES
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SYNOPSIS
A modern retelling of Rabindranath Tagore's Kabuliwala, the film is about the unique bond between a young woman and a bioscope projectionist who gave her some of the best memories of her childhood. Spanning across decades and countries, this poignant tale about human connections also recounts one woman's quest to find the missing pieces in her story.
CAST
CREW
BMS Reviewer
Verdict: A war-ravaged gem that fights to shine! There are very few movies that truly do justice to the stories they have been adapted from. Such sort of film-making has always been a risky territory. Trespassers are more often than not prosecuted by the critics, and harshly so. With Bioscopewala, Deb Medhekar proves that with the correct vision, imagination, a well-planned screenplay and a talen...
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The Times of India
Based on Rabindranath Tagores famous short story `Kabuliwala`, the film is about a young girls quest to discover more about her dead fathers friend who used to play bioscope shows for her as a kid.
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NDTV
As loose an adaptation of a short story as any ever attempted, Deb Medhekar`s Bioscopewala takes the kernel of Rabindranath Tagore`s fabled Kabuliwala and turns it, on one level, into an affecting meditation on paternal love, bereavement, loss and redemption. On another, the tender, warm, pensive film, set in contemporary Kolkata and Afghanistan, ruminates upon the ravages of war and time, the repercussions of religious bigotry and the regenerative power of stories that humans tell, no matter where they come from.
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Filmfare
Stories are a way of preserving history. Of giving us a continuation between the past and present. Of keeping memories alive. Rabindranath Tagores Kabuliwala was about a Pathan from Kabul who comes to Kolkata to sell dry fruit and befriends a young Bengali girl because she reminds her of the young daughter he has left behind. Director Deb Medhekar has modernised the story. His Kabuliwala is forced to run away from Afghanistan because he cannot bear the tyranny of the Taliban any longer.
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Rediff
Debutant director Deb Medhekar`s Bioscopewala, a contemporary adaptation of Tagore`s Kabuliwala, is a sweet film, soothing to the eyes, and weaves a story of human suffering cutting across national boundaries. A guilt-ridden father Robi Basu (Adil Husain) at the airport, on his way to Kabul, pens a confession to his estranged daughter (Gitanjali Thapa) that reaches her only as the last remains of her father whose aeroplane meets a fatal end.
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Firstpost
For its relatively short runtime of 90 odd minutes, Deb Medhekar packs in a multitude of ideas and themes within his debut feature film Bioscopewala, a loose adaptation of Rabindranath Tagores classic story, Kabuliwala. As a result, Bioscopewala often finds itself meandering through sub-plots and narrative zones that could have fared better with deeper exploration.
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Film Companion
Bioscopewala, a thoughtful adaptation of Rabindranath Tagores Kabuliwala, thrives on its little updates and changes to the original short story. Perhaps the most relevant difference is the introduction of the titular character as a harbinger of mobile dreams a man using his beloved bioscope to spread the joy of Indian movies in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. This man, Rehmat Khan (an ageless, affecting Danny Denzongpa), later a Pathani refugee in Calcutta, holds the key to the way we perceive the film he occupies. It isnt so much about the magic of movies for him. You suspect he finds, in those films, a reason to be distracted from his life, just as he finds in a neglected Bengali child the comfort of his distant Kabuli daughter.
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Mumbai Mirror
Rabindranath Tagores short story Kabuliwala traces the bond between Rehmat Khan, an Afghan dry fruit vendor and Mini, a young girl in Kolkata who reminds him of his own daughter back home. The story inspired two directors in the late 50s Tapan Sinha brought it to screen in Bengali (1957), while Hemen Guptas Hindi version released in 1961 and starred Balraj Sahni in the eponymous role. Bioscopewala, which claims to be inspired by the characters of the timeless classic hopes to retain the elements of the original story of love, loss and redemption. In this pursuit, however, it drags the story in various directions loosely packs in mystery but keeps it from turning into a procedural investigation. Also, the eponymous lead here suffers from a degenerative condition that impairs his memory so its up to Mini to join the dots.
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