When I was watching Sange Dorjee Thongdok’s River Song, a film about a cross-culture friendship set in the backdrop of the Dibang dam construction in Arunachal Pradesh, I couldn’t help thinking of two other films with dams at the centre of the story — Jia Zhangke’s Still Life (2006) and Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (2013).

While Night Moves is evidently a movie (a thriller) that one would not compare immediately with River Song, a drama (in that regard, Thondok’s film…

Zibahkhana claims to be the first Pakistani splatter horror movie, which involves a Leatherface-Jasonesque burka-clad slasher and some zombies (yes people, this movie exists and needs to be seen). To be honest it is very derivative of the American teens-on-a-trip horror genre and is a B-movie on a very tight budget, with more money thrown in to make fake guts and blood look real than on finding good actors. It starts off as a slasher movie, veers into socio-political commentary,…