Subhadeep Banik

Senior Scientist, Faculty of Informatics

University of Lugano, Switzerland

Phone: +41767186574

Baby I am sorry

About me

I was born in 1982 in Kolkata (WB). I completed my B.Tech in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering and M.Tech in Automation and Computer Vision from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur in 2006. I received my PhD in Computer Science from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata in 2015.

I was a Post Doctoral Researcher in DTU Compute at Lyngby and at Temasek Labs, NTU Singapore. Currently I worked as an Ambizione fellow in the LASEC group in Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne since June 2017. I am currently at USI in Lugano.

Running Records

I am an avid long distance runner. It is more of an addiction now for me ... Some of my records

10 km record .. at Valletta in Malta (42:00) Garmin record
1st Half Marathon ... at the Stade at St Sulpice (3rd day of lockdown) (101:43) Garmin record
Half Marathon Record .. at the Stade at St Sulpice (97:17) Garmin record
Longest Run (24.94 km, 145:51) .. during the pandemic lockdown at St Sulpice Garmin Record. This was actually a mistake: I had intended to run only a half marathon. But during COVID, the authorities had restricted access to the stadium where I usually run. I figured out that from my apartment to the stadium, and then 6 laps around the circular road near the stadium to the International Olympic Committee building to the Bourdonette metro station, and then back to my apartment was just about slightly more than 21 and a half kilometers. So I followed this route couple of times, whenever I wanted to run a half-marathon. On this particular day however, I lost count around the circular road, and ran 7 instead of 6 laps. I realized the mistake only when I had come back and synced the route map on my phone.
Half Marathon at Prague during the CHES 2023 conference. One of the most pleasurable half-marathons I have run in my life. The weather was nice and the view all along the Vltava river was breathtaking. Prague is probably the only city in the world that has a such a well maintained, wide jogging lane all along the river. Garmin Record
Half Marathon at Amsterdam during the CARDIS 2023 conference. Funny story: a few years ago I had been to Amsterdam for work: I was staying in a different part of the city then, and I remember I had to cross the river by a ferry at Ijplein everyday to get to where I was going. This time my hotel was in a completely different part of the city. I started running in the morning, and after making a few turns left and right, finally found a long straight road to run on. After 30 minutes or so, I came across the ferry at Ijplein again !!! Such a small world. Garmin Record
Half Marathon at Beijing. This was by far my most difficult outing. The temperature was below freezing (around -4 degrees) throughout the 106 minutes or so. Plus Beijing has a very dry climate which makes it impossible to sweat. It was weird coming back from such a grueling run with my shirt still dry. Also I was slightly late in the morning, as a result on my way back to the hotel I had to stop every 10 minutes or so at all the traffic lights. Garmin Record
Half Marathon in Halifax. This was my slowest half marathon as I was running after quite a while and the roads in Halifax were very very hard. The city being surrounded by the sea, I had hoped that the surroundings would be more picturesque. However my running route was waylaid by numerous factories and industrial institutions interspersed with railway tracks invading gratuitously across normal roads. On the last day I did find a quiet hiking trail near the sea, but it was too dark and I did not venture too far into it lest I should get lost. Garmin Record

Some tips to long distance runners. While running always try to run/land on your toe-tips and never on the entire feet or heels. Otherwise this leaves you open to chronic heel ailments like plantar fascitis, a condition I would not wish on my worst enemy. Try to run on softer surfaces like grass lawns or athletic tracks, or even on treadmills. Avoid concrete roads or similar hard surfaces: if this can not be avoided make sure you wear proper running shoes and always land on toetips. For beginners, try and take it slow initially and build up your stamina. When I first started running, I could only run around 2 km but I gradually built up lung capacity, calf muscles etc.

Research Interest

- Cryptanalysis and Cryptography
- Stream Ciphers
- Number Theory
- Coding Theory

Source Codes

- Atomic-AES (Link)
- Atomic-AES v2.0 (Link)

Doctoral Dissertation

- Some Studies on Selected Stream Ciphers. Analysis, Fault Attack & Related Results: February 2015, Kolkata. (Link)

Publications

Subhadeep Banik, Subhamoy Maitra and Santanu Sarkar. A Differential Fault Attack on the Grain Family of Stream Ciphers. CHES 2012, LNCS 7428, pp. 122-139, 2012.
Subhadeep Banik, Subhamoy Maitra and Santanu Sarkar. On the Evolution of GGHN Cipher. Indocrypt 2011, LNCS 7107, pp. 181-195, 2011.
Subhadeep Banik, Daibashish Gangopadhyay, T. K. Bhattacharyya. A Low Power 1.8 V 4-Bit 400-MHz Flash ADC in 0.18u Digital CMOS. VLSI Design 2006, pp. 69-74, 2006.
Vivek Agarwal, Tarun K Bhattacharayya and Subhadeep Banik. Design steps for bulk micro machined single axis silicon capacitive accelerometer with optimised device dimensions. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 34, pp. 722-727, 2006.
Bidyut B. Chaudhuri and Subhadeep Banik. A novel Multi-Trie based approach for Spell Checking. 10th International Conference on NLP, pp. 251-259, 2010.
Subhadeep Banik, Subhamoy Maitra and Santanu Sarkar. Some results on Related Key-IV Pairs of Grain . SPACE 2012, LNCS 7644, pp. 94-110, 2012.
Subhadeep Banik, Subhamoy Maitra and Santanu Sarkar. A Differential Fault Attack on Grain-128a using MACs . SPACE 2012, LNCS 7644, pp. 111-125, 2012.
Subhadeep Banik, Subhamoy Maitra and Santanu Sarkar. A Differential Fault Attack on Grain family under reasonable assumptions. Indocrypt 2012, LNCS 7668, pp. 191-208, 2012.
Subhadeep Banik and Subhamoy Maitra. A Differential Fault Attack on MICKEY 2.0. IACR eprint archive, 2013:029.
Subhadeep Banik, Subhamoy Maitra, Santanu Sarkar and Meltem Sonmez Turan. A Chosen IV Related Key Attack on Grain-128a. ACISP 2013, LNCS 7959, pp. 13-26, 2013. Best Student Paper Award.
Subhadeep Banik and Subhamoy Maitra. A Differential Fault Attack on MICKEY 2.0. CHES 2013, LNCS 8086, pp. 215-232, 2013.
Santanu Sarkar, Subhadeep Banik and Subhamoy Maitra. Differential Fault Attack against Grain family with very few faults and minimal assumptions. IACR eprint archive, 2013:494.
Subhadeep Banik and Anusha Chowdhury. Improved Scan-Chain based Attacks and Related Countermeasures. Indocrypt 2013, LNCS 8250, pp. 78-97, 2013.
Subhadeep Banik, Santanu Sarkar and Raghu Kacker. Security Analysis of the RC4+ Stream Cipher. Indocrypt 2013, LNCS 8250, pp. 297-307, 2013.
Sonu Jha, Purnendu Banerjee and Subhadeep Banik. Random Walk based Image Segmentation with Color Space Graphs. Procedia Technology Vol. 10, pp. 271-278, Elsevier, 2013.
Toshanlal Meenpal, Subhadeep Banik and Subhamoy Maitra. A Scheme for Conditional Access based Systems using Index Locations of DCT Coefficients. To appear in the Journal of Real-Time Image Processing.
Subhadeep Banik Some Insights into the Differential Cryptanalysis of Grain v1. ACISP 2014, LNCS 8544, pp. 34-49, 2014.
Santanu Sarkar, Subhadeep Banik and Subhamoy Maitra. Differential Fault Attack against Grain family with very few faults and minimal assumptions. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 64(6): pp. 1647-1657. (2015)
Subhadeep Banik, Subhamoy Maitra and Santanu Sarkar. Improved Differential Fault Attack on MICKEY 2.0. Journal of Cryptographic Engineering, 5(1): pp. 13-29. (2015).
Subhadeep Banik. Dynamic Cube Attack on 105 round Grain v1. IACR eprint archive, 2014:652.
Subhadeep Banik, Anupam Chattopadhyay and Anusha Chowdhury. Cryptanalysis of the Double-Feedback XOR-Chain Scheme proposed in Indocrypt 2013. Indocrypt 2014, LNCS 8885, pp. 179-196, 2014.
Subhadeep Banik and Sonu Jha. Some Security Results of the RC4 + Stream Cipher. To appear in Security and Communication Networks, Wiley Online Publishing.
Subhadeep Banik. Some results on Sprout. Accepted at Indocrypt 2015.
Subhadeep Banik. Conditional Differential Cryptanalysis of 105 round Grain v1. To appear in Cryptography and Communications- Discrete Structures, Boolean Functions and Sequences.
Subhadeep Banik and Sonu Jha. How not to combine RC4 States. To appear in SPACE 2015.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov and Francesco Regazzoni. Exploring Energy Efficiency of Lightweight Block Ciphers. To appear in SAC 2015.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov, Takanori Isobe, Kyoji Shibutani, Harunaga Hiwatari, Toru Akishita, Francesco Regazzoni. Midori: A Block Cipher for Low Energy. To appear in ASIACRYPT 2015.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov, Kazuhiko Minematsu. Low-Area Hardware Implementations of CLOC, SILC and AES-OTR (Extended Abstract). Accepted in IEEE HOST 2016.
Subhadeep Banik, Francesco Regazzoni, Andrey Bogdanov. Energy Evaluation of AES-Based Authenticated Encryption Algorithms. To be presented in DIAC 2015.
Subhadeep Banik and Andrey Bogdanov. Cryptanalysis of two fault countermeasure schemes. Accepted at Indocrypt 2015.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov and Francesco Regazzoni. Exploring the Energy Consumption of Lightweight Blockciphers in FPGA. Accepted in IEEE ReConFig 2015.
Subhadeep Banik and Takanori Isobe. Cryptanalysis of the full Spritz stream cipher. Accepted in Fast Software Encryption 2016.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov, Francesco Regazzoni, Takanori Isobe, Toru Akishita, Harunaga Hiwatari. Round Gating for Low Energy Block Ciphers. Accepted in IEEE HOST 2016.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov, Francesco Regazzoni, Carlos Sau, Tizianna Fanni, Luigi Raffo, Francesca Palumbo. Adaptable AES Implementation with Power-Gating Support. Accepted in ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers 2016.
Danilo Sijacic, Andreas Brasen Kidmose, Bohan Yang, Subhadeep Banik, Begul Bilgin, Andrey Bogdanov, Ingrid Verbauwhede. Hold your breath, PRIMATEs are lightweight. Accepted in Selected Areas in Cryptography 2016.
Sonu Jha, Subhadeep Banik, Takanori Isobe and Toshihiro Ohigashi. Some Proofs of Joint Distributions of Keystream Biases in RC4. Accepted in Indocrypt 2016.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov and Francesco Regazzoni. Atomic AES: A Compact Implementation of the AES Encryption/Decryption Core. Accepted in Indocrypt 2016.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov and Francesco Regazzoni. Atomic AES v2.0. IACR eprint archive, 2016:1005.
Ralph Ankele, Subhadeep Banik, Avik Chakraborti, Eik List, Florian Mendel, Siang Meng Sim, Gaoli Wang. Related Key Impossible Differential Attack on Reduced Round SKINNY. Accepted in Applied Cryptography and Network Security 2017.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov, Takanori Isobe and Martin Bjerregard jepsen. Analysis of Software Countermeasures for Whitebox Encryption. Accepted in IACR Transactions of Symmetric Key Cryptology.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov and Francesco Regazzoni. Efficient Configurations for Block Ciphers with Unified ENC/DEC Paths. Accepted at IEEE HOST 2017.
Subhadeep Banik, Takanori Isobe and Masakatu Morii. Analysis and Improvements of the Full Spritz Stream Cipher. Accepted at IEICE Transactions A, 2017.
Subhadeep Banik and Takanori Isobe. Some cryptanalytic results on LIzard. Accepted in IACR Transactions of Symmetric Cryptology, Vol: 2017:4.
Subhadeep Banik, Sumit Kumar Pandey, Thomas Peyrin, Siang Meng Sim, Yu Sasaki, Yosuke Todo. GIFT: A Small Present. Accepted at Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems 2017.
Subhadeep Banik, Takanori Isobe and Masakatu Morii. On Design of Robust Lightweight Stream Cipher with Short Internal State. Accepted at IEICE Transactions A, 2017.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov and Francesco Regazzoni. Compact Circuits for Combined AES Encryption/Decryption. Accepted in Journal of Cryptographic Engineering.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov, Francesco Regazzoni, Takanori Isobe, Toru Akishita, Harunaga Hiwatari. Inverse Gating for Low Energy Block Ciphers. Accepted in IEEE HOST 2018.
Subhadeep Banik, Vasily Mikhalev, Frederik Armknecht, Takanori Isobe, Willi Meier, Andrey Bogdanov, Yuhei Watanabe, Francesco Regazzoni. Towards Low Energy Stream Ciphers. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology 2018.
Sonu Jha, Subhadeep Banik, Takanori Isobe, Toshihiro Ohigashi, Santanu Sarkar. Theoretical Understanding of Some Conditional and Joint Biases in RC4 Stream Cipher. Accepted in IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrey Bogdanov, Atul Luykx, Elmar Tischhauser. SUNDAE: Small Universal Deterministic Authenticated Encryption for the IoT. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology: Volume 2018, Issue 3.
Subhadeep Banik, Jannis Bossert, Amit Jana, Eik List, Stefan Lucks, Willi Meier, Mostafizar Rahman, Dhiman Saha and Yu Sasaki: Cryptanalysis of ForkAES. Accepted in Applied Cryptography and Network Security, 2019.
Fatih Balli and Subhadeep Banik: Six Shades of AES. Accepted at Africacrypt 2019.
Subhadeep Banik, Yuki Funabiki and Takanori Isobe: More results on Shortest Linear Programs. Accepted in IWSEC, 2019.
Subhadeep Banik, Khashayar Barooti and Takanori Isobe: Cryptanalysis of Plantlet. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology: Volume 2019, Issue 3, 2019.
Andrea Caforio and Subhadeep Banik: A Study of Persistent Fault Analysis. Accepted in SPACE 2019. Best Paper Award
Fatih Balli and Subhadeep Banik: Exploring Lightweight efficiency of ForkAES. Accepted at Indocrypt 2019.
Roberto Avanzi, Subhadeep Banik, Orr Dunkelman, Hector Montaner, Prakash Ramrakhyani, Francesco Regazzoni and Andreas Sandberg: Protecting Memory Contents on ARM Cores. Accepted at Real World Cryptography 2020.
Hamid Nejatollahi, Felipe Valencia, Subhadeep Banik, Rosario Cammarota,Nikil Dutt, Francesco Regazzoni. Synthesis of Flexible Accelerators for Early Adoption of Ring-LWE Post-quantum Cryptography. Accepted in ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, 2020.
Subhadeep Banik, Fatih Balli, Francesco Regazzoni and Serge Vaudenay. Swap and Rotate: Lightweight Linear Layers for SPN-based Blockciphers. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology: Volume 2020, Issue 1.
Andrea Caforio, Fatih Balli and Subhadeep Banik. Energy Analysis of Lightweight AEAD Circuits. Accepted in Cryptography and Network Security 2020.
Subhadeep Banik, Zhenzhen Bao,Takanori Isobe, Hiroyasu Kubo, Kazuhiko Minematsu, Fukang Liu, Kosei Sakamoto, Nao Shibata, Maki Shigeri. WARP : Revisiting GFN for Lightweight 128-bit Block Cipher. Accepted in Selected Areas in Cryptography 2020.
Fatih Balli, Andrea Caforio and Subhadeep Banik. The Area-Latency Symbiosis: Towards Improved Serial Encryption Circuits. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, Volume 2021, Issue 1.
Subhadeep Banik, Yuki Funabiki and Takanori Isobe: Further Results on Efficient Implementations of Block Cipher Linear Layers. Accepted in IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences, 2020.
Subhadeep Banik, Khashayar Barooti, F. Betul Durak and Serge Vaudenay: Cryptanalysis of LowMC with a single plaintext/ciphertext pair . Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology: Volume 2020, Issue 4.
Andrea Caforio, Fatih Balli and Subhadeep Banik. Melting SNOW-V: Improved lightweight Architectures. Accepted in Journal of Cryptographic Engineering 2020.
Andrea Caforio, Fatih Balli, Subhadeep Banik and Francesco Regazzoni: A Deeper look at Energy Consumption of Lightweight Block Ciphers. Accepted in DATE 2021.
Subhadeep Banik, Takanori Isobe, Fukang Liu, Kazuhiko Minematsu and Kosei Sakamoto: Orthros: A Low-Latency PRF. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology: Volume 2021, Issue 1.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrea Caforio, Takanori Isobe, Fukang Liu, Willi Meier, Kosei Sakamoto, Santanu Sarkar: Atom: A Stream Cipher with Double Key Filter. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology: Volume 2021, Issue 1.
Sergio Roldan Lombardio, Fatih Balli and Subhadeep Banik: Six Shades Lighter- A bit-serial implementation of the AES family. Accepted in Journal of Cryptographic Engineering, 2021.
Subhadeep Banik, Khashayar Barooti, Serge Vaudenay and Hailun Yan: New Attacks on LowMC instances with Single Plaintext/Ciphertext pair. Accepted in Asiacrypt 2021.
Andrea Caforio, Fatih Balli and Subhadeep Banik. Complete Practical Side-Channel-Assisted Reverse Engineering of AES-Like Ciphers. Accepted at CARDIS 2021.
Andrea Caforio, Daniel Collins, Ognjen Glamocanin and Subhadeep Banik. Consolidating First-Order Threshold Implementations of SKINNY. Accepted at Indocrypt 2021.
Andrea Caforio, Subhadeep Banik, Yosuke Todo, Willi Meier, Takanori Isobe, Fukang Liu, Bin Zhang. Perfect Trees: Designing Energy-Optimal Symmetric Encryption Primitives. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology: Volume 2021, Issue 4.
Andrea Caforio, Daniel Collins, Subhadeep Banik and Francesco Regazzoni. A Small GIFT-COFB: Lightweight Bit-Serial Architectures. Accepted at Africacrypt 2022.
Subhadeep Banik. Cryptanalysis of Draco. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology: Volume 2022, Issue 2
Subhadeep Banik, Daniel Collins and Willi Meier. Near Collision Attack against Grain v1. Accepted at ACNS 2023.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrea Caforio, Kostas Papagiannopoulos, and Francesco Regazzoni. Bias Cancellation of Mixcolumns. Accepted at SPACE 2022.
Ravi Anand, Subhadeep Banik, Andrea Caforio, Kazuhide Fukushima, Takanori Isobe, Shisaku Kiyomoto, Fukang Liu, Yuto Nakano, Kosei Sakamoto and Nobuyuki Takeuchi. An Ultra-High Throughput AES-based Authenticated Encryption Scheme for 6G: Design and Implementation. Accepted at ESORICS 2023.
Mathijs De Kremer, Marco Brohet, Subhadeep Banik, Roberto Avanzi and Francesco Regazzoni.

Resource-Constrained Encryption: extending Ibex with a QARMA Hardware Accelerator.

Accepted in 34th IEEE International Conference on Application-specific Systems, Architectures and Processors.

Roberto Avanzi, Subhadeep Banik, Orr Dunkelman, Maria Eichlseder, Shibam Ghosh, Marcel Nageler and Francesco Regazzoni. The Tweakable Block Cipher Family QARMA v2. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology Vol 2023, Issue 3.
Christian Pilato, Subhadeep Banik et al. A System Development Kit for Big Data Applications on FPGA-based Clusters: The EVEREST Approach. Accepted in Design Automation and Test

in Europe Conference (DATE) 2024.

Ravi Anand, Subhadeep Banik, Andrea Caforio, Tatsuya Ishikawa, Takanori Isobe, Fukang Liu, Kazuhiko Minematsu, Mostafizar Rahman and Kosei Sakamoto. Gleeok: A Family of Low-Latency PRFs and its Applications to Authenticated Encryption. Accepted in IACR Transactions in Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems Vol 2024, Issue 1.
Subhadeep Banik and Francesco Regazzoni. Compact Circuits for Efficient Mobius Transform. In IACR Transactions in Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems Vol 2024, Issue 1.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrea Caforio, Serge Vaudenay. New attacks on LowMC using partial Sets. Accepted in IACR Communications in Cryptography, 2024 vol 1.
Sushmita Thakur, Subhadeep Banik and Francesco Regazzoni. Energy Analysis of Cryptographic Algorithms in Server Environments. Accepted at Cloud Computing Security Workshop (CCSW) 2024
Subhadeep Banik and Francesco Regazzoni. Faster and more Energy-Efficient Equation Solvers over GF(2). Accepted at SPACE 2024.
Fukang Liu, Katharina Koschatko,Lorenzo Grassi, Hailun Yan, Shiyao Chen, Subhadeep Banik, Willi Meier. Opening the Blackbox: Collision Attacks on Round-Reduced Tip5, Tip4, Tip4' and Monolith. IACR Transactions in Symmetric Cryptology Vol 2024, Issue 4.
Subhadeep Banik, Andrea Caforio, Kosei Sakamoto, Mostafizar Rahman, Tatsuya Ishikawa, Takanori Isobe. AETHER: An Ultra-High Throughput and Low Energy Authenticated Encryption Scheme. Accepted in IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, 2025(2).

E-books

A few books that I have read

Interesting Links

Check these out.

Favourite TV Shows

I have been watching American and British TV shows for about 10 years now .. here are a few of my favourites

Breaking Bad

Creator: Vince Gilligan

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris.

Story : A terminally ill Chemistry teacher starts cooking crystal meth with his former student in order to provide for his family after his death. Flawlessly acted and directed, this show has taken Television to a whole new level of aesthetic brilliance.

Better Call Saul

Creator: Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould.

Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Rhea Seehorn.

Story : The trials and tribulations of criminal lawyer, Saul Goodman, in the time leading up to establishing his strip-mall law office in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Blackadder

Creator: Richard Curtis and Ben Elton

Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Lawrie, Miranda Richardson, Steve Mcinnery.

Story : They say that no one makes comedy better than the British; Blackadder may be just the reason why. The show follows the hillarious adventures of Blackadder as he caters to the whims and fancies of the royalty and aristocracy around him.

Coupling

Creator: Steven Moffat

Cast: Jack Davenport, Gina Bellman, Sarah Alexander, Kate Isitt, Ben Miles, Richard Coyle.

Story : This is probably the most hillarious adult comedy ever made, some of the episodes had me literally in splits. The show follows the misadventures of six friends as they try to find their bearings in upper class London.

Yes Minister

Creator: Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.

Cast: Paul Eddington, Nigel Hawthorne, Derek Fowlds.

Story : The show follows the adventures of a British cabinet minister and his permanent secretary as they pursue a game of cat and mouse to outsmart one another. The series is genuinely funny and is suitable for family viewing.

Arrested Development

Creator: Mitchell Hurwitz.

Cast: Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, Portia De Rossi, Will Arnett, David Cross, Tony Hale .

Story : After his father is arrested for illegal use of company funds, level headed son Michael Bluth must take charge of his dysfunctional family as he tries to keep the plummeting family business in tact, even as he attempts to be a role model to his teenage son. Perhaps the best comedy show to come out of US in ages, the episodes contain a brand of extremely witty humor which is fascinating to watch.

The Shield

Creator: Shawn Ryan.

Cast: Michael Chiklis, Benito Martinez, Walton Goggins, Jay Karnes, CCH Pounder, Kenny Johnson, David Rees Snell.

Story : Inspired by the Rampart Scandal that rocked the LAPD at the turn of the century, the show follows the lives of the officers of a corrupt police division in Farmington City, Los Angeles.

The Sopranos

Creator: David Chase.

Cast: James Gandolfini, Edie Falco, Lorraine Bracco, Michael Imperioli, Drea De Matteo.

Story : Modern day morality tale about New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano, as he deals with personal and professional issues in his home and business life.

House

Creator: David Shore.

Cast: Hugh Laurie, Robert Sen Leonard, Omar Epps.

Story : A brilliant but antisocial doctor, chases mysterious un-diagnosed diseases while at the same time battling crippling physical pain.

Angels in America

Creator: Tony Kushner.

Cast: Al Pacino, Jeffrey Wright, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Justin Kirk, Mary Louise Parker, Ben Shenkman, Patrick Wilson.

Story : Year 1985. As the AIDS epidemic begins to spread in America, the series takes a look at the lives which are altered forever as a result of it. Bolstered by stellar performances by the entire cast led by Al Pacino, the show is a riveting watch.

The X-Files

Creator: Chris Carter.

Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Robert Patrick.

Story : Two FBI agents, Fox Mulder the believer and Dana Scully the skeptic, investigate the strange and unexplained while hidden forces work to impede their efforts.

The Wire

Creator: David Simon.

Cast: Dominic West, Deirdre Lovejoy, Lance Reddick, Clarke Peters .

Story : Baltimore drug scene, seen through the eyes of drug dealers, and law enforcement.

Sons of Anarchy

Creator: Kurt Sutter.

Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman, Maggie Siff, Katey Sagal.

Story : The ups and downs of a Motorcycle club in Charming California.

True Detective

Creator: Nic Pizzolatto.

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson.

Story : The lives of two detectives, Rust Cohle and Martin Hart, become entangled during a 17-year hunt for a serial killer in Louisiana.

Archer

Creator: Adam Reed.

Cast: H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, Jessica Walters, Judy Greer, Amber Nash, Chris Parnell, Adam Reed.

Story : At ISIS, an international spy agency, global crises are merely opportunities for its highly trained employees to confuse, undermine, betray and royally screw each other.

Seinfeld

Creator: Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David.

Cast: Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, Jason Alexander.

Story : Story of Jerry Seinfeld and his band of neurotic middle aged New Yorker friends and their equally absurd adventures.

Big Bang Theory

Creator: Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady.

Cast: Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting,Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar.

Story : Tells the story of four brilliant scientists as try to overcome their social awkwardness to woo the fairer sex. Stellar performance by Jim Parsons makes the show consistently watchable.

Veep

Creator: Armando Ianucci.

Cast: Julia Louise Dreyfuss, Tony Hale.

Story : Former Senator Selina Meyer finds that being Vice President of the United States is nothing like she hoped and everything that everyone ever warned her about.

The Fall

Creator: Allan Cubitt .

Cast: Gilian Anderson, Jamie Dornan, John Lynch.

Story : BBC Drama about a serial killer and a ruthless policewoman in pursuit. Unlike other shows of the same genre it does not superhumanize its characters and is superbly scripted, acted and directed. Includes terrific performances by an all round cast led by Gilian Anderson.

Collateral

Creator: David Hare.

Cast: Carey Mulligan.

Story : After an employee at a Pizza delivery place is gunned down on the street in a southwest London suburb, a rookie detective is assigned to the case.

Love Death and Robots

Creator: Tim Miller

Story : A collection of animated short stories that span various genres including science fiction, fantasy, horror and comedy.

Mindhunter

Creator: Joe Penhall

Cast: Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, Anna Torv

Story : Fascinating story of how the FBI warmed up to the idea of Behavioral Profiling.

DNA

Creator: Torleif Hoppe

Cast: Anders Berthelsen, Charlotte Rampling, Nicolas Bro.

Story : Five years after his daughter's disappearance, Danish police officer Rolf discovers a fatal flaw in the DNA database, and reopens a case that leads to a Europe-wide hunt for the kidnappers.

Unbelievable

Creator: Susannah Grant, Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman

Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Merritt Wever, Toni Collette.

Story : Two detectives investigate gruesome serial rapes that occurred unabated over 3 years across the United States.

My Favorite Movies

I am a movie addict and have watched over 1000 films from all over the world. Here are a few of my favorites.

Cries and Whispers (1972)

Dir: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Liv Ullman, Ingrid Thulin, Erland Josephson, Harriet Anderson

Story : Two sisters reunite to take care of their other terminally ill sister which results in a confrontation of all their repressed feelings.

Scenes from a Marriage (1975)

Dir: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Liv Ullman, Erland Josephson

Story: Follows the tumultous story of a Swedish couple over 16 years as their marriage goes through love, infidelity, divorce and separation. The story unfolds in six separate scenes and is the most comprehensive film ever made on the institution of marriage.

Autumn Sonata (1978)

Dir: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Liv Ullman, Ingrid Bergman.

Story : A decorated pianist comes to visit her daughter for a few days. Initially all goes well, until one night when the daughter spews her hatred for the mother.

Persona (1966)

Dir: Ingmar Bergman

Cast: Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson.

Story : Midway through the production of a play, a theater actress suddenly stops talking and is incommunicado eversince. A nurse is appointed to look after her.

Zerkalo (1974)

Dir: Andrey Tarkovsky

Cast: Margarita Terekhova.

Story : A man in his forties is going to die and remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments but things that also tell the story of all the Russian nation. The BBC critic Jonathan Crocker had said this about the film "Cinema rarely gets this close to poetry in motion.." Link

Solyaris (1972)

Dir: Andrey Tarkovsky

Cast: Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolay Grinko.

Story : This is perhaps one of the best science fiction movies ever made. The film follows the story of a psychologist who is sent to a space station which is orbiting a planet that may possess intelligence of its own.

Stalker (1979)

Dir: Andrey Tarkovsky

Cast: Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolay Grinko.

Story : A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.

8 ½ (1963)

Dir: Federico Fellini

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimee.

Story : A film director, immersed in his own male fantasies, struggles to come to terms with the making of his film even as he pursues an affair with a crew member.

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Dir: Federico Fellini

Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimee.

Story : The film follows a few days in the life of a philandering tabloid journalist as he goes from one debauchery to the other.

La Strada (1954)

Dir: Federico Fellini

Cast: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart.

Story : The first and the original road movie. The film follows the trials and tribulations of a girl who is sold to a travelling performance artist.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Dir: Luis Bunuel

Cast: Silvia Pinal.

Story : Bizarre surreal story of guests at an upper class dinner party who find themselves unable to leave for no explicable reason. Very quickly they are forced to abandon their genteel natures and reduced to live like animals.

Rashomon (1950)

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

Cast: Toshiro Mifune.

Story : A heinous crime recounted from four different points of view. The film calls into question the very nature of truth and existence.

Two or Three Things I Know About Her... (1967)

Dir: Jean Luc Godard

Cast: Marina Vlady.

Story : The film takes a closer look at Paris in the 60s as people try to reconcile themselves with the Vietnam War and a possible nuclear war. Morality is worthless commodity and people resort to prostitution for money.

Where is the Friend's Home? (1987)

Dir: Abbas Kiarostami

Cast: Babek Ahmed Poor.

Story : Ahmed watches his friend getting a beating from the teacher for not doing homework in the designated notebook. After school he realizes that he has taken his friend's notebook by mistake. Although he does not know the exact location of his friend's house, he spends the day trying to return the notebook. Just the kind of simplistic storyline that defined Iranian new wave cinema, this film is a treat to the senses.

Crimson Gold (2003)

Dir: Jafar Panahi

Cast: Hossain Emadeddin, Kamyar Sheisi.

Story : A critique on the contemporary class barriers in the Iranian society, the film follows the life of a pizza delivery guy as he endures one humiliation after the other and is driven to crime.

Offside (2006)

Dir: Jafar Panahi

Cast: Sima Mobarak-Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ayda Sadeqi

Story : Hillarious story about four girls who dress up as men and try to enter a football stadium where women are not allowed to enter.

3-Iron (2004)

Dir: Kim Ki Duk

Cast: Seung-yeon Lee, Hyun-kyoon Lee, Hyuk-ho Kwon

Story : A young man breaks in empty houses and lives a normal life while the owners are traveling. Trouble ensues when he falls in love with a woman in an abusive marriage.

Chungking Express (1994)

Dir: Wong Kar Wai

Cast: Brigitte Lin, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro.

Story : This movie about two love-struck policemen is filmed in impressionistic splashes of motion and color.

Days of being wild (1990)

Dir: Wong Kar Wai

Cast: Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Andy Lau.

Story : Set in 1960, the film centres on the young, boyishly handsome Yuddy, who learns from the drunken ex-prostitute who raised him that she is not his real mother. Hoping to hold onto him, she refuses to divulge the name of his real birth mother. Two women have the bad luck to fall for Yuddy. He passively lets the two compete for him, unable or unwilling to make a choice. Later, Yuddy learns of his birth mother's whereabouts and heads out to the Philippines.

Happy Together (1997)

Dir: Wong Kar Wai

Cast: Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai.

Story : A homosexual couple arrive in Argentina from Hong Kong. Their distinctive lifestyles take them separate ways.

Farewell My Concubine (1993)

Dir: Chen Kaige

Cast: Leslie Cheung, Gong Li, Fengyi Zhang.

Story : The story of two men, who met as apprentices in the Peking Opera, and stayed friends for over 50 years and the woman in their lives who stands up heroically to both of them as political upheavals in China tear their life apart.

Confessions (2010)

Dir: Tetsuya Nakashima

Cast: Takako Matsu.

Story : A teacher plots intricate revenge against the high school students responsible for her daughter's death.

Parasite (2019)

Dir: Bong Joon Ho

Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong.

Story : A lower middle class family con their way into service jobs in a wealthy household.

Last Tango in Paris (1973)

Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci

Cast: Marlon Brando, Jean Pierre Leaud, Maria Schneider.

Story : A young Parisian woman begins a sordid affair with a middle-aged American businessman.

Mother and Son (1997)

Dir: Alexandr Sokurov

Cast: Aleksei Ananishnov, Gudrun Geyer

Story : A dutiful son takes care of his ailing mother.

La Pianiste (2001)

Dir: Michael Haneke

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Benoit Magimel, Annie Girardot.

Story : To get out of her humdrum existence, a masochistic piano teacher pursues an affair with her student, leading to disastrous consequences.

Talk to Her (2002)

Dir: Pedro Almodovar

Cast: Javier Camara, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores.

Story : Two men strike up an unusual frienship while caring for their comatose girlfriends.

The Skin I Live in (2011)

Dir: Pedro Almodovar

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya.

Story : A brilliant cosmetic surgeon takes an unusual revenge on the person he holds responsible for his daughter's death.

The Secret in their eyes (2009)

Dir: Juan Jose Campanella

Cast: Ricardo Darin, Soledad Vilamil.

Story : A retired legal counselor writes a novel hoping to find closure for one of his past unresolved homicide cases and for his unreciprocated love with his superior - both of which still haunt him decades later..

No Country for Old Men (2007)

Dir: Joel and Ethan Cohen

Cast: Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson.

Story : Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande.

Le Fils (2002)

Dir: Jean Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Cast: Olivier Gourmet.

Story : A carpenter at a technical school takes on a young intern and soon starts to follow him across the hallway and streets.

Melancholia (2011)

Dir: Lars Von Trier

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland.

Story : A sadistic girl ruins her marriage on the night of her wedding even as an alien planet threatens to crash on to the Earth.

The Square (2017)

Dir: Ruben Ostlund

Cast: Claes Bang, Elizabeth Moss

Story : A advertising campaign for an art exhibit generates way too much controversy around the Stockholm museum ecosystem.

Nymphomaniac Vol. I and II (2013/14)

Dir: Lars Von Trier

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skaarsgard, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBoeuf.

Story : A self-diagnosed nymphomaniac recounts her erotic experiences to the man who saved her after a beating.

Amores Perros (2000)

Dir: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Cast: Emilio Echevarria, Gael Garcia Bernal, Goya Toledo

Story : A horrific car accident connects three stories, each involving characters dealing with loss, regret, and life's harsh realities, all in the name of love.

Before Sunset (2004)

Dir: Richard Linklater

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.

Story : This sequel to Before Sunrise (1995) is set exactly 9 years after the events of the movie. Estranged lovers Jesse and Celine meet again by accident, and spend the day discussing their lives and the life that could have been.

Jeune et Jolie (2013)

Dir: François Ozon

Cast: Marina Vacth, Geraldine Pailhas.

Story : After losing her virginity, Isabelle takes up a secret life as a call girl, meeting her clients for hotel-room trysts. Throughout, she remains curiously aloof, showing little interest in the encounters themselves or the money she makes.

Shame (2011)

Dir: Steve McQueen

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan.

Story : A nymphomaniac's life is disrupted when his sister drops in for an unexpected visit.

Sunshine (2007)

Dir: Danny Boyle

Cast: Cilian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh.

Story : After a failed mission, another team of international scientists are sent to the dying sun to reignite it by detonating a nuclear device.

In this World (2002)

Dir: Michael Winterbottom

Cast: Jamal Udin Torabi, Enayatullah

Story : Docudrama about 2 refugees as they leave their camp in Peshawar to get to London.

Ad Astra (2019)

Dir: James Gray

Cast: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee jones.

Story : An astronaut is given the task of communicating with his father who went rogue on a mission to Neptune 30 years earlier.

A History of Violence (2005)

Dir: David Cronenberg

Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt

Story : A family man is outed on local media after he takes on a couple criminals holding up their coffee shop.

The Messenger (2009)

Dir: Oren Moverman

Cast: Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton

Story : A soldier whose job it is to inform family members of martyrs killed in action, falls in love with the widow of a fallen marine.

Margin Call (2011)

Dir: JC Chandor

Cast: Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker.

Story : An associate at a trading firm accidentally discovers that some of the recent trades made by the company could wipe out its market cap.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Dir: Wes Anderson

Cast: Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Angelica Huston.

Story : A tragi-comic look at the Tenenbaum family who all gather under one roof one last time.

Three Colours: Blue (1993)

Dir: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Cast: Juliette Binoche.

Story : A woman struggles to cope with the death of her husband and son.

Annie Hall (1977)

Dir: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton.

Story : Neurotic New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with the ditsy Annie Hall.

Manhattan (1979)

Dir: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton.

Story : A divorced New Yorker currently dating a high-schooler brings himself to look for love in the mistress of his best friend instead.

Another Woman (1988)

Dir: Woody Allen

Cast: Gena Rowlands, Mia Farrow.

Story : Facing a mid-life crisis, a woman rents an apartment next to a psychiatrist's office to write a new book, only to become drawn to the plight of a pregnant woman seeking that doctor's help.

Husbands and Wives (1992)

Dir: Woody Allen

Cast: Sydney Pollack, Liam Neeson, Mia Farrow, Judy Davis, Woody Allen.

Story : When their best friends announce that they're separating, a professor and his wife discover the faults in their marriage.

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Dir: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: George C. Scott, Peter Sellers.

Story : An insane American general orders a nuclear attack on Russia. The US President later learns that there may bigger repercussions if the bombs manage to detonate.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Dir: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onfrio.

Story : A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow Marine recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting set in 1968 in Hue, Vietnam.

The Insider (1999)

Dir: Michael Mann

Cast: Russel Crowe, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer.

Story : A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a "60 Minutes" to blow the whistle on his parent Tobacco company.

Get Out (2017)

Dir: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Catherine Keener

Story : A man is invited by his girlfriend to spend a few days with her parents, where things get weirder by the minute.

TRAFFIC (2000)

Dir: Stephen Sodherberg

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Don Cheadle, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, Dennis Quaid.

Story : A conservative judge is appointed by the President to spearhead America's escalating war against drugs, only to discover that his teenage daughter is a crack addict. Two DEA agents protect an informant. A jailed drug baron's wife attempts to carry on the family business.

Moonlight (2016)

Dir: Barry Jenkins

Cast: Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Janelle Monáe, Ashton Sanders, Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali

Story : A coming of age drama that tells the story of a young african american boy from his upbringing to teen years and finally into adulthood.

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

Dir: Ari Folman

Cast: Ari Folman, Ori Sivan, Ronny Dayag.

Story : An Israeli film-maker conducts a series of interviews in a bid to remember certain events during his military stint in Lebanon.

Millennium Actress (2001)

Dir: Satoshi Kon

Cast: Miyoko Shoji, Mami Koyama, Fumiko Orikasa.

Story : A TV interviewer and his cameraman meet a former actress and travel through her memories and career.

Paprika (2006)

Dir: Satoshi Kon

Cast: Megumi Hayashibara, Tôru Emori, Katsunosuke Hori.

Story : When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patients' dreams is stolen, only a young female therapist, Paprika, can stop it. .

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Dir: Gus Van Sant

Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams, Stellan Skaarsgard, Minnie Driver.

Story : Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT, has a gift for mathematics, but wastes his time with his friends making trouble around the neighborhood. He is taken in by a mathematics professor who introduces him to a psychiatrist who may be able to turn his life around.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Dir: Darren Arronofsky

Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Marlon Wayans.

Story : A look at the lives of four New Yorkers who self-destruct after being hooked on to drugs. Told in a slick and stylish manner, this clearly one of the better movies to come out of Hollywood in years.

12 Angry Men (1957)

Dir: Sidney Lumet

Cast: Henry Fonda, Martin Balsam, John Fiedler, Lee J. Cobb.

Story : Twelve jurors sit down to decide the fate of a murder trial.

Maps to the Stars (2014)

Dir: David Cronenberg

Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Julianne Moore, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson.

Story : A look at the sordid and eccentric lives of Hollywood elite as seen through the eyes of an ageing actress and her disfigured secretary.

The Substance (2024)

Dir: Coralie Forgeat

Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennid Quaid

Story : An ageing actress about to loose her spot on a network TV show injects herself with a black market drug to regain her youth. This is one of the most genuinely scary movies I have seen in a while.

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Dir: Kathryn Bigelow

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty.

Story : During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.

BABEL (2006)

Dir: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rinko Kikuchi, Koji Yakusho, Adriana Barraza, Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal, Elle Fanning.

Story : An american couple vacationing in Morocco get involved in an accident which triggers events halfway around the world.

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Dir: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: John Travolta, Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Harvey Kietel, Bruce Willis.

Story :The lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

Adaptation (2002)

Dir: Spike Jonze

Cast: Nicholas Cage, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep.

Story : A love-lorn script writer grows increasingly desperate in his quest to adapt the book 'The Orchid Thief'.

Ghost World (2001)

Dir: Terry Zwigoff

Cast: Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi.

Story : Two bored teenagers decide to play a prank on a middle-aged man.

You Can Count on Me (2000)

Dir: Kenneth Lonergan

Cast: Laura Linney, Matthew Broderick, Mark Ruffalo.

Story : A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Dir: Michel Gondry

Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson.

Story : A couple undergo a therapeutic procedure to erase each other's memories from their brains.

Black Friday (2004)

Dir: Anurag Kashyap

Cast: Pawan Malhotra, Kaykay Menon, Aditya Srivastava.

Story : A fascinating look at the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai and its aftermath.

Shatranj Ke Khiladi (1977)

Dir: Satyajit Ray

Cast: Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Richard Attenborough, Amjad Khan, Tom Alter, Victor Banerjee.

Story : A semi-fictional story of the British takeover of Awadh. Stellar performance by Amjad Khan who plays the effeminate king Wajid Ali Shah with grace and panache all too rare in Indian cinema.

Nayak (1966)

Dir: Satyajit Ray

Cast: Uttam Kumar, Sharmila Tagore.

Story : A popular actor opens up about his life and career to a journalist while on a train journey.

Joi Baba Felunath (1979)

Dir: Satyajit Ray

Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Utpal Dutt, Santosh Dutta

Story : A very valuable Elephant God statue goes missing, and detective Prodosh Mitra is called upon investigate.

Shabdo (2012)

Dir: Kaushik Ganguly

Cast: Ritwick Chakraborty, Raima Sen, Churni Ganguly

Story : A professional sound recording artist's obsession for creating sound effects for films makes him oblivious to all the natural sounds around him.