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Namrata Joshi

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Winner of India's National Award for Best Film Critic for 2004, she has contributed to several film journals and anthologies and recently came out with her first book, "Reel India: Cinema off the Beaten Track." She has been a member of the Fipresci critics' juries at numerous international film festivals. She has covered the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Pingyao International Film festival and International Film Festival and Awards Macao. She has been on the selection committee at the International Film Festival of India, Goa, and on the juries at Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival and International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala. A winner of the Charles Wallace India Trust-Iqbal Sarin memorial fellowship, she has also been the winner of the British Chevening Scholarship for Indian Journalists.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Irkalla: Gilgamesh's Dream (2025) EDIT “No doubt censuring the adults for bringing things to such a pass for the children is necessary. But as we move along in the narrative, things begin to turn predictable and over the top in their sentimentality and messaging. ” – The New Indian Express Jan 15, 2026 Full Review We Shall Not Be Moved (2024) EDIT “The powerful, intimate and sensitive film leaves the viewers with an overwhelming sense of anguished healing and poignant closure.” – The New Indian Express Jan 14, 2026 Full Review Special Unit - The First Murder (2025) EDIT “It’s a fairly engaging, if predictable, mainstream crime film but also brings in a touch of social realism of Scandinavian crime thrillers...” – The New Indian Express Jan 14, 2026 Full Review A Useful Ghost (2025) 86% EDIT “A Useful Ghost stands out in the way Boonbunchachoke marks a gradual transition from the poetic and romantic to the larger grim, contentious issues confronting his nation and its history. ” – The New Indian Express Jan 14, 2026 Full Review Familia (2024) EDIT “Costabile crafts a fine film with characters and relationships that have depth and complexity. ” – The New Indian Express Jan 14, 2026 Full Review The Things You Kill (2025) 95% EDIT “The Things You Kill is an unhurried but riveting ride of a film, rich in subtexts and profundities and the many riddles, meanings and metaphors that Khatami leaves for the audience to plumb into and decipher.” – The New Indian Express Jan 14, 2026 Full Review Peacock (2024) 100% EDIT “Albert Schuch’s absurdist turn is the core strength of Peacock. You laugh at him and are moved by his character’s crises as well.” – The New Indian Express Jan 14, 2026 Full Review Happy Birthday (2025) 100% EDIT “The film is a straight and simple and often predictable narrative that points a finger at the audience...The sentimentality, however, gets balanced out by Goher’s empathetic touch and the incredible presence...” – The New Indian Express Jan 14, 2026 Full Review No Other Choice (2025) 97% EDIT “Chan-wook’s dexterity and craft is in great display while marrying the sound and visuals to the off-kilter plot and seamlessly handling the tonal shifts and transitions. ” – The New Indian Express Nov 13, 2025 Full Review Weightless (2025) EDIT “While you can pre-empt and predict a lot that transpires on screen, it’s Thalund’s gentle, tender, sensitive and sympathetic handling of the adolescent confusions and turmoil that lends the film freshness and sparkle. ” – The New Indian Express Nov 13, 2025 Full Review Amoeba (2025) 100% EDIT “It is a refreshingly astute and insightful exploration of a teenage girl’s inner transformation and personal assertiveness within the confines of a distinct and defined national and socio-cultural context.” – The New Indian Express Nov 13, 2025 Full Review Six Days in Spring (2025) EDIT “A ‘slice of holiday’ film that ends up holding a mirror to life itself, its many inequities, injustices and incongruities.” – The New Indian Express Nov 13, 2025 Full Review To the Victory! (2025) EDIT “The rambling narrative mirrors the disorderliness in filmmaking in a country at war with itself. Despite the emotional crises, there are welcome bursts of humour as well like the filmmaker participating in a virtual meeting to procure grants for his film.” – The New Indian Express Oct 1, 2025 Full Review Eagles of the Republic (2025) 65% EDIT “Eagles of the Republic is a sturdy and enjoyable mainstream thriller. It might sport the right ideology at heart, but one that doesn’t cut deep enough. ” – The New Indian Express Oct 1, 2025 Full Review Father (2025) EDIT “Milan Ondrík as Michal internalises all these searing emotions and reflects them on his face, his body, his soul, his very being. It’s an intense interpretation of a harrowing reality and leaves one with goosebumps. ” – The New Indian Express Oct 1, 2025 Full Review Mosquitoes (2025) EDIT “The most distinctive aspect of the film is its unsentimental, no holds-barred world building. How it transports us to the summer of 1997...through the place and the people as seen through the eyes of the young girls.” – The New Indian Express Sep 1, 2025 Full Review Two Seasons, Two Strangers (2025) EDIT “Marked by Miyake’s distinctive observational skills and compassion and warmth for the human condition, the narrative coasts along leisurely with rhythmic beats and elegant patterns, making for a most soulful, tactile piece of cinema. ” – The New Indian Express Sep 1, 2025 Full Review With Hasan in Gaza (2025) 100% EDIT “Aljafari calls it “an homage to Gaza and its people” and a film about “the catastrophe, and the poetry that resists”. That alone makes it worth a view despite the--perhaps deliberate--choppy, jagged narrative and the coarseness to the filmmaking. ” – The New Indian Express Sep 1, 2025 Full Review A Pale View of Hills (2025) 63% EDIT “The many ambiguities often make things irritatingly convoluted and the acting, other than from Hirose and Yoshida, is not layered enough to deliver on the emotions, intrigues and the complexities.” – The New Indian Express Sep 1, 2025 Full Review Renoir (2025) 87% EDIT “Hayakawa wins the day by casting the amazing Yui Suzuki as Fuki. She has just the perfect mix of the idiosyncratic and imaginative, innocent and vulnerable to make the inner struggles of the character strongly resonant.” – The New Indian Express Jul 31, 2025 Full Review Aisha Can't Fly Away (2025) EDIT “Shot in the Ain Shams area of Cairo,...the film has a locational specificity, vibrancy and energy to it while reflecting its all-pervasive lawlessness and danger amid the milling crowds. ” – The New Indian Express Jul 31, 2025 Full Review Sand City (2025) EDIT “...the intrepidly crafted, off-the-beaten-path film is an exciting, artistically audacious addition to the new wave Bangladeshi cinema. The most obvious bit of its ingenuity lies in the visual flair with which it frames Dhaka. ” – The New Indian Express Jul 31, 2025 Full Review Dog on Trial (2024) 79% EDIT “At times too much seems to be happening on screen, the sense of chaos, in turn, also coming to inhabit the audience’s mind. A reason why the engagement with the goings-on on the screen stays inconsistent. ” – The New Indian Express Jul 31, 2025 Full Review Dreams (2024) 90% EDIT “...despite being dangerously wordy the film never gets annoying. There’s a lightness of touch and lovely play of words which has you invested in the dissection of feelings on screen.” – The New Indian Express Jul 31, 2025 Full Review The Gas Station Attendant (2025) EDIT “Purely as a documentary about family, it may not have the layers of Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell but it makes up for it with its straightforward honesty and emotional acuity. ” – The New Indian Express Jun 26, 2025 Full Review
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