NEW ON SCREENS

Dibakar Banerjee returns to the big screen, a dystopian vision of America at war with itself, and other titles to watch

CIVIL WAR

One of the more talked about films of the year, Civil War imagines a dystopian US with an authoritarian government battling its own citizens, with the states forced to choose sides. The film follows a team of journalists through the warzone. The cast includes Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Jesse Plemons and Nick Offerman. Written and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina). (In theatres)

THE SYMPATHIZER

A Vietnamese captain living in the US in a community of South Vietnamese refugees must spy on them and report back to the Viet Cong. This blackly comic series starring Hoa Xuande and Robert Downey Jr., is based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel of the same name. Directed by Don McKellar and Park Chan-wook. (JioCinema)

ALL INDIA RANK

is a third-generation descendent of the slice-of-life films made by Sai Paranjpye, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee. It’s the first film by comic, lyricist and writer Varun Grover, a semi-autobiographical tale of Vivek (Bodhisattva Sharma), a young man sent to Kota to join the unforgiving coaching classes for the IIT entrance exams. Two exceptional performances come from Vivek’s parents back home: Geeta Agarwal as his mother, who runs a PCO, and Shashi Bhushan as R.K. Singh, a government employee. (Netflix)

LOVE SEX AUR DHOKHA 2

Hindi film fans in 2010 will remember the delicious shock of Love Sex Aur Dhokha, Dibakar Banerjee’s triptych of stories about the then-burgeoning digital era in India. Much has changed since, and it’ll be interesting whether Banerjee can push buttons in the same way 14 years later with this sequel of sorts. It’s co-written with Shubham and Prateek Vats (Eeb Allay Ooo) and features an ensemble cast with Mouni Roy, Swastika Mukherjee, Urfi Javed, Bonita Rajpurohit and Nimrit Ahluwalia.(In theatres)