First Iraqi director at Cannes wins top prize with The President's Cake
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
2 days ago
- The National
How Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda's Saiyaara became one of biggest Bollywood films of the year
A Bollywood love story with a moderate budget and two fresh faces is taking the Indian box office by storm, becoming one of the year's top-grossing films in just two weeks. Saiyaara, directed by Mohit Suri, features debutant Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda in the lead. The film, which was released on July 18, was made on a budget of approximately 60 crore (600 million) rupees, according to Financial Express. It has already collected more than 327 crore (3.2 billion) rupees at the box office, making it the second-highest grossing Indian film of the year, behind the blockbuster Chhaava, which was released in February. What is Saiyaara about? Saiyaara centres around an emotionally-unstable rising musician Krish (Panday) who forms a deep connection with a shy poet Vaani, played by Padda. It is loosely based on the 2004 South Korean film A Moment to Remember, about a couple whose relationship is tested after marriage. Director Suri is known his emotionally-charged romantic films, from Aashiqui 2 and Ek Villain. What are critics and audiences saying about the film? Saiyaara has received generally positive reviews from film critics, many praising Panday and Padda's performances. The film seems to have struck a chord with Gen Z audiences with many of them sharing clips of themselves on social media crying and cheering in the cinema. One viral clip even showed a fan watching the film with an IV drip hooked to his hand. Film trade analyst Komal Nahta even called Saiyaara a 'modern-day DDLJ ', comparing it to the 1995 love story, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, a massive box office success considered one of the greatest romantic Bollywood films. 'Some may find what I'm going to say here outrageous,' Nahta posted on X the week of Saiyaara 's release. 'But I've always spoken business, and so here I am: Looking to the fact that today's collections would surpass Friday's record-smashing collections and today's footfalls will be more than Saturday's, I feel inclined to say that YRF and Mohit Suri's Saiyaara is turning out to be Aditya Chopra and YRF's modern-day DDLJ.' The film's soundtrack, featuring songs by hitmakers Mithoon and Tanishk Bagchi among others, have also become massive hits. As of Monday afternoon, the film's title song, Saiyaara, has garnered more than 150 million views on YouTube. Many have also credited the film's success to its deliberately low-key marketing by producer and distributor Yash Raj Films, foregoing conventional promotional routes or using star power to hype up interest in the film – instead using word of mouth and social media reactions to create buzz. Who are Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda? The cousin of actress Ananya Panday and the nephew of actor Chunky Ahaan Panday, has acting pedigree. His sister, Alanna Panday, is a YouTube star, while his mother Deanne Panday, is a known wellness coach, having author several popular health books. His father, Chikki Panday, is a businessman and Chunky's brother. Padda, meanwhile, is a former model, best known for her role in the 2024 Prime Video series Big Girls Don't Cry. Originally from Punjab, Padda is also a singer and songwriter. Saiyaara is her first major film role.
The National
3 days ago
- The National
'I am the last link': Hamid Al-Saadi's fight to save a centuries-old Iraqi musical tradition
Hamid Al-Saadi is worried he might be the last one in the lineage, the final master of a musical tradition that dates back centuries. The 67-year-old is recognised as the most prominent practitioner of Iraqi maqam, the only vocalist to have mastered the tradition's entire repertoire of 56 pieces. He is also the author of the first two new maqams to have been composed in the past century – both appear on Maqam Al-Iraq, Al-Saadi's first album in 25 years, which was released on July 18. Yet it's not clear to Al-Saadi when, or if, the next additions to the canon will come. 'I remain the last link – I carry all the traditions of maqam with me,' says the exiled musician. 'There's nobody else alive who knows this entire tradition and nobody who's actively performing it, or taking on the responsibility to pass on the maqam.' Elements of Iraqi maqam can be traced back to the Abbasid golden era of AD750 to AD1258, when Baghdad's place at the heart of Islamic civilisation was akin to modern London or New York as the 'centre of inspiration for artists from all over the world,' says Al-Saadi. While the Arabic maqam can be considered a system of modes, Iraqi maqam refers to a repertoire of compositions, where each maqam has a specific episodic structure. Its preservation has been inscribed on Unesco's Intangible Heritage list. Unique to Iraq is Maqam Mukhalif, reputed to have first been sung after the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, ending 500 years of prosperity. 'A lot of Iraq has seen pain and suffering, and most maqams were born from a specific story that affected the singer or musician,' explains Al-Saadi. 'It's a malleable form that can adjust to current events – that's what keeps maqam alive, able to persist throughout many generations.' Yet there is no set text for each musical composition, with the lyric the choice of the performer. 'You could have three different singers perform the same maqam, following the same musical structure, but each choosing a different poem,' adds Amir ElSaffar, a member of Al-Saadi's band and founder of Maqam Records, which is releasing Maqam Al-Iraq. 'One could be an extremely sad poem, the other could be joyful or divine, one could be very secular – that keeps it dynamic and constantly changing.' Al-Saadi was one of the last musicians to grow up amid affluence and intellectual freedom. It was a time when maqam performances were regularly heard in Iraq's concert halls and coffee houses, and performers were supported by institutes and conservatories. Born in 1958, and having mastered the entire repertoire by his mid-twenties, Al-Saadi became an in-demand performer on stage and television throughout the 1980s. Yusuf Omar, the most recorded Iraqi maqam singer in history, eventually named Al-Saadi his successor. Before him, Omar had learnt from Mohammed Al-Gubbanchi, who in turn studied with forefather Ahmed Zaidan – a ceremonial torch-passing that dates back centuries. But Al-Saadi is not sure there is anyone to pass the torch to next. 'I became the link from those masters to the generation that I live in,' says Al-Saadi, humbly claiming he did not ascend to 'even one quarter' of Omar's technique. After the UN Security Council imposed sanctions in 1990 and the first Gulf War, Iraq's civil society crumbled and, unable to support himself as a musician, Al-Saadi fled to London in 1999. He busied himself writing a book about Iraqi maqam, Al-Maqam wa Buhoor Al-Angham. In 2003 he was approached by ElSaffar, a young and hungry Iraqi-American jazz trumpeter who had already made a name for himself performing with free jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor. Raised in Chicago and on a mission to reconnect with his roots, ElSaffar arrived in London fresh from six months of fruitless study in Iraq. 'I went to Baghdad at a very difficult moment – 35 years of dictatorship, 12 years of sanctions, and it was a very tense time politically post 9-11,' remembers ElSaffar. Moreover, all the teachers he approached refused to take a novice Arabic speaker seriously. When it became clear a second invasion was inevitable, ElSaffar decamped to London and tracked down Al-Saadi, who took him on as a student. 'Hamid was my dream teacher because he would sit and teach me, phrase by phrase, and he wouldn't let me move on until I mastered it,' adds ElSaffar. The knowledge he gleaned enabled ElSaffar's later experiments with Arabic music – witnessed in Abu Dhabi with a performance of his 17-piece Rivers of Sound ensemble at NYUAD in 2016. In 2018, ElSaffar repaid the favour, bringing Al-Saadi to the US on an Artist Protection Fund Fellowship. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, Al-Saadi has held teaching positions at Sarah Lawrence College and Rutgers University, and lectured through institutions including Lincoln Centre, the Smithsonian and Kennedy Centre. His greatest influence may have been on stage, leading Safaafir, the only Iraqi maqam ensemble in the US – a family affair featuring ElSaffar on santur, his sister Dena ElSaffar on violin and joza, and her husband Tim Moore on percussion. It was this group that recorded Maqam Al-Iraqi via ElSaffar's continuing Maqam Studio preservation initiative. The 87-minute, four-track album is named after its first piece, a maqam of longing Al-Saadi composed since moving to the US, based on a text by the highly regarded Iraqi poet Ni'mah Hussain. 'I lived in exile for seven years,' adds Al-Saadi. 'I missed my homeland, my people – the essence of longing comes from the poem and the text.'
Khaleej Times
23-07-2025
- Khaleej Times
Decoding 'Saiyaara' effect: Why Gen-Z is loving this Bollywood film
In an era dominated by OTT and streaming — where the urgency of going to the cinema has all but faded — thousands flocked to theatres, caught in the hype of what can only be described as the ' Saiyaara effect'. Suddenly, that communal magic long lost to our pocket-sized screens feels alive again. And it isn't driven solely by spectacle. Unlike the action-packed blockbusters that have recently dominated the box office — full of hypermasculine heroes smashing buildings and 'bad guys' — Saiyaara offers something starkly different: a return to stories of love, loss, and longing. In many ways, marking the revival of simple romantic stories with layered emotions, music that tugs at the soul, and performances that feel honest. If you listed these ingredients back in the early 2000s, you'd be describing a Bollywood staple. But in 2025, it somehow felt like we were asking for too much. Enter Saiyaara: a film that, at its core, remains a timeless tale of heartbreak — carried by young, beating hearts — but without ever trying to brand itself as a 'Gen-Z romance'. It doesn't promise a 'new-age' love story, but instead offers an age-old one, simply told through the emotional lens of a generation that's never truly found itself in stories of love and heartbreak. This generation never had its DDLJ, Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai, Veer Zaara. O r even its Aashiqui. Sure, we can go back and watch those classics with all the fondness in the world, but they'll always be from a time before ours — experienced as borrowed nostalgia. Then came Saiyaara, offering not a replication of those romances, which have been tried, tested, and failed, but an echo of the emotions we once felt when Raj rallied for Simran in DDLJ, or when Aman let go of Naina in Kal Ho Naa Ho, all set in a world that feels our own. A new love language for an evergreen emotion Off-late, we've seen a whole crop of films and shows trying to capture Gen-Z romance — Naadaniyaan, Loveyapa, Feels Like Ishq, Ishq Vishk Rebound, and many other names that I cannot even frankly begin to remember without a strenuous Google search. While many of these try to package youth through aesthetics, quirky meet-cutes, and Gen-Z slang, they rarely scratch beneath the surface. Love, in these stories, is more a 'vibe' than a feeling. Something that happens on dating apps and in DMs, but not in flesh and bone… the butterflies of a first meeting or the punch in the gut after a breakup. They explore the beginning of love, but rarely its heartbreak — and even more rarely, the weight of when the heart breaks. Which is where Saiyaara flips the script. It gets real with you. The reality of falling in love is hardly ever like the movies — and Gen-Z, being emotionally and intellectually clued in, has figured that out. You can't sway us with the La La Land version of romance because we won't buy it. But to assume this generation has given up on love entirely, even in the movies, is skipping a few too many steps ahead. Hence, when Saiyaara offers unabashed love on a platter, we're bound to lap it up. But more importantly, it serves love with a side of emotional realism, not fantasy. This isn't a fantastical tale of lovers overcoming external odds like in DDLJ, it's about young people struggling with their own inner demons: unspoken silences, fractured relationships, emotional pain. We see it in the way Vaani Batra (played by Aneet Padda) shuts down emotionally after being dumped on her wedding day, unable to even express her grief to herself, let alone her parents. We see it in Ahaan Panday's Krish Kapoor, who self-sabotages, lashes out, hurts the very people trying to love him. Their connection flickers in and out, with distance, and without, not because they're not invested, but because neither of them knows how to hold on to love while trying to heal themselves — an emotional conflict that defines much of the Gen-Z angst. Mental health isn't treated as a side plot. Vaani spirals into clinical depression following her traumatic breakup. In earlier generations, this might not have been seen as plausible, but for an audience that has grown up acknowledging and experiencing mental health struggles, it feels raw and real. Krish wrestles with grief and simmering rage rooted in parental trauma — a reality many of us will know intimately. Yet, Saiyaara never tries to educate us about mental health issues, it simply acknowledges its existence. Both Krish and Vaani allow us to sit with the mess, the breakdowns, the uncomfortable confusion and silences, in a way that feels familiar. The casting makes all the difference What most definitely adds to the film's impact is Ahaan Panday's dreamy debut, more impactful than anything we've seen in a long, long time. His honest eyes give this generation a humanised protagonist: someone flawed, bruised, but striving to evolve. From an emotionally unavailable 'red flag' with deep-rooted daddy issues to a man willing to sacrifice his rock-solid ego and identity for the woman he loves, Krish Kapoor hits that sweet spot between unhinged toxicity and performative wokeness. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ahaan Panday (@ahaanpandayy) 'The film is about falling in love for the first time. You can't show someone in their 30s or 40s or 50s falling in love for the first time because then that's a whole different film,' Suri said in an interview, which also stands as a critical point of resonance. In a cinematic landscape where older actors are routinely cast to play younger roles, Saiyaara's lead actors don't just look young, they are the generation they're representing on screen. They carry the emotional awkwardness and rawness of early adulthood. As Suri puts it, 'Whether it's through texts, letters, or DMs, your heart still breaks the same way. You can swipe as much as you want, left or right, but the heart stays in the same place, somewhere to the centre-left. And that's going to stay the same for generations to come.' That, ultimately, is what Saiyaara understands. And to anyone who thinks Gen-Z doesn't have the attention span beyond a viral audio track on Instagram Reels, well, perhaps it was because we've stopped finding melodies worth remembering. But Saiyaara 's album soothes like completing the lyrics of the song you'd forgotten to sing. It isn't perfect cinema. Nor does it reinvent the heartbreak genre. But as a cultural moment, it captures the yearning and the devastation of first love, at a time when Bollywood had forgotten how to do so, and in a way that also speaks directly to this generation.
