Red Lorry Film Festival – Day 3 – March 15, 2026

Now absolutely fatigued , I set forth for day 3. While the Andheri West locations were easy and three theatres were within walking distances of each other, one other location was at Juhu – still not bad and doable if you are in Andheri west. The venue at BKC was truly “far out” – pun intended. For any and every movie, there were long queues at the BKC location, due to which I missed at least three morning movies that I had narrowed down and ended up attending a Masterclass by Sriram Raghavan, before the film Night Creatures which he said was somewhat like his film Merry Christmas, though slightly different. Looking at the crowds, I decided to return to Andheri , and ended up watching 2 movies. The Andheri locations were far better as there were hardly any crowds – even for a popular film like Leon. Clearly discretion is better than valor 🤣 .

Leon The Professional (1992). Director: Luc Besson.

Watching this well-known film on the big screen was a treat (had watched multiple times on the small screen). Amazing to see how Natalie Portman displayed incredible talent even then (she was only 13 years old when the film was released) and how she developed into an excellent actress with multiple plaudits to her credit, over the years. Besson’s style is clear as the action scenes are superbly choreographed. Gary Oldman does yet another of his famous ‘carpet chewing’ scenes in the film (someone should compile such scenes over the years in various films into a video). A superb ‘action’  film (whoever thought the word Action instead of Violence is a true Marketing Genius 🤣) . This is the extended version with Mathilda even expressing ‘love’ and asking Leon to love her – shocking then and now.  There are also multiple ‘hits’ where Leon trains Mathilda.

My rating : 4 out of 5

Bayaan (2025). Writer Director : Bikas Ranjan Mishra

Roohi, the daughter of a famous prosecutor, is tasked to investigate the charismatic leader of a cult , accused of sexual exploitation and other malpractices, through an anonymous letter. Roohi , lands up in the remote Rajasthani town and starts her enquiries . She faces obstructions from all quarters, starting with the female head of all devotees, the local authorities including her local boss. The ‘Ashram’ has a system of giving new names to the members , who discard their ‘out worldly’ names. Roohi soon comes across that one name that she was looking. Promised protection, the woman is taken to a remote location but is shot dead by a local man who then kills himself. The leads are dead and Roohi doesn’t know what to do or whom to contact to take it ahead…

 
Based on true stories and real events . That’s the moniker at the beginning of the film. Thankfully , the other standard long disclaimer about “not purporting to be a history”, “only dramatization of real events” and so on is not shown . Even if such a disclaimer is absent, the onscreen events are totally creepy as we see various white clad women praising their ‘Father’ who makes an appearance only in the last few moments of the film.

The inspiration of this ‘Father’ is clear and is a combination of two such leaders who are in jail but have been repeatedly given parole. The overall nexus and pressure of caste and community, especially in rural Rajasthan, makes the message clear – silence is a virtue and anyone breaking that silence, even if it is to the Government, is in for a rough time , leading to deaths by ‘suicide’.

The film unfolds like a regular police thriller and some of the writing is predictable, even cliched and that is what takes away from the overall punch.  Otherwise, this would have been a terrific film about real world malpractices of many Babas and Pitaas and Maharajs. The film is supposedly ready for commercial release in 2026. 


Performances are all good except that the story is very predictable – good DOES triumph over evil , thanks to the ‘Bayaan’ of a few brave women . They were trolled in public heavily by the ‘followers’ – yet they didn’t flinch and gave testimony that resulted in the arrest and jail of the ‘Fathers’. One only hopes that the film doesn’t face any major hurdles from the political sponsors of such “fathers” and its a story that needs to be told across the country .

My rating : 3.5 out of 5