Oscar-Qualified Marathi Short Film Dear Panther Selected at London Lift-Off Global Network

The Oscar-qualified Marathi short film Dear Panther has been officially selected at the prestigious Lift-Off Global Network – London Lift-Off Film Festival 2025, marking a significant international milestone for Indian independent cinema. The festival is regarded as an important global platform for emerging filmmakers, offering international exposure and industry networking opportunities.

The Lift-Off Global Network hosts a series of film festivals during the Lift-Off Season, featuring curated screenings, showcases at Pinewood Studios, workshops, and structured networking programs. Selected filmmakers are invited to join the Lift-Off Network Members Hub, enabling participation in global focus groups, professional workshops, and collaborations through both online and in-person sessions.

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly advancing yet deeply unequal India, Dear Panther presents a powerful social narrative. While the nation celebrates historic achievements such as the successful launch of Chandrayaan-3, a significant segment of its educated population continues to struggle for basic rights. The film captures this contradiction with sensitivity and realism, earning its status as an Oscar Qualified Short Film.

The story revolves around a PhD scholar fighting a prolonged legal and bureaucratic battle with the local Municipal Corporation to claim his rightful home. His personal struggle evolves into a broader resistance against systemic injustice, administrative neglect, and widening socio-economic inequality. As the divide between the privileged and the marginalized deepens, Panther emerges as a voice for the oppressed. The film compellingly questions whether he can lead his community out of systemic deprivation—or be consumed by it.

The film’s impact is strengthened by its strong creative execution. Director Dhananjay Nirmalaxman Sable delivers a compelling vision, supported by Shonali Dhakane’s precise editing, Ajay Sagar’s realistic cinematography, and evocative background music composed by Pratik Borase, which draws audiences deeper into the emotional landscape of the narrative.

A unique aspect of Dear Panther is its authentic portrayal of real-life residents from Mumbai’s Dadar chawls, many of whom continue to live without basic civic amenities or housing rights. Their lived experiences lend the film a powerful documentary-like realism. Sable also plays the lead role of Panther, delivering a restrained yet impactful performance that captures inner conflict, resistance, and moral urgency. The supporting cast—including Deepali Badekar, Ashlesha Gade, Shonali Dhakane, Pragya Garibe, Atish Akhade, Harish Kadam, Kishor Bachhav, child actor Aaradhya Jadhav, and 73-year-old Vanitabai Kharat in her debut performance—adds emotional depth and credibility. Officials’ roles portrayed by Ankush Chourpagar, Amar Lahane, Nitin Shinde, and Ravi Kale further strengthen the narrative.

Dear Panther has received recognition at several prestigious film festivals worldwide, including:

12th Goa International Short Film Festival, Panaji 2025 – Best Indian Writer (Screenplay)

Jaipur International Film Festival 2026 – Official Selection

Vaanam Art Festival – P.K. Rosy Short Film Festival, Chennai

Kobani International Film Festival, Germany

Egyptian-American International Film Festival, New York

Ajanta-Ellora International Film Festival, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra

The film’s post-screening Q&A sessions have sparked meaningful discussions, underscoring its strong social relevance and cinematic impact. With Dear Panther, writer-director Dhananjay Nirmalaxman Sable establishes a distinct voice on the global stage, while co-producer Nitin Shinde, in his debut as producer, successfully shoulders a significant creative responsibility.

The production received substantial local support from Amar Lahane Mitra Mandal, Chunabhatti, and Bouddhajan Panchayat Committee No. 127, Dadar, whose cooperation was instrumental during filming.

The international recognition of Dear Panther is not merely a milestone for a single film but represents a meaningful step forward for socially conscious Indian and Marathi cinema.

🔗 Vote for Dear Panther at the London Lift-Off Film Festival 2025:

Tickets are now available for purchase by the public via website:

Dear Panther Voting and Preview Tickets are now available for purchase by the public via website:

Liftoff.network/london-lift-off-film-festival-2025/

"Manthan" Art Exhibition by Anisha Sanghani in Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery

From December 1–6, 2025, U.S.-based artist Anisha Sanghani brings her inspiring exhibition “Manthan—Let the Churn Begin Within You” to Mumbai. With oceans occupying 71% of our planet, Sanghani uses the Samudra Manthan myth to reimagine Earth’s vast waters as sites of both crisis and transformation.

Artist: Anisha Sanghani

This edition of “Manthan” focuses on plastic suffocation, portraying turtles navigating choking debris, fish trapped in drifting nets, and mythological figures gasping under symbolic coils of waste. Yet Sanghani’s luminous palettes offer a sense of hope—suggesting that awareness can spark change.

 

Her mixed-media artistry weaves textures with radiant strokes, showing that beauty can exist even in struggle. Sanghani’s own immersion experiment—submerging with plastic on her face—deepened her resolve to speak for silent marine beings. “Their lungs became my lesson,” she reflects.

Ocean Illusion Collection (1 of 8 Paintings )

12x12 inches

Mixed-Media on Canvas

 

“Manthan” stands as an invitation: to awaken, introspect, and begin the conscious inner churning needed to protect the waters we rely on.

 

This show will be inaugurated on 1^st December 2025 at 5pm by Distinguished Guests:

Ms. Nidhi Choudhari, IAS, Director, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mr. Sameer Balvally and Shilpa Jain Balvally, founders of the award-winning architecture and interior design practice Studio Osmosis, Mr. Ronak Sutaria, CEO, Respirer Living Sciences, Mr. Rishiraj Sethi, Director, Aura Art Development Pvt Ltd and co-founder of Aura Art, Dilip Ranade, Distinguished Indian artist and former Senior Curator at Mumbai’s CSMVS, Prakash Bal Joshi, Renowned Artist and Author.

 Manthan: Let the Churn Begin Within You” — An Environmental Awakening

Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery, Nariman Point, Mumbai | Dec 1–6, 2025

“The Pulse of Harmony” Solo Show of Paintings By well-known artist Dadasaheb Yadav in Jehangir Art Gallery

In this new body of work, Dadasaheb Yadav steps away from the representational terrains that once anchored his explorations of monsoon, earth, and the fragrant immediacy of Earth. Instead, he enters the atmospheric unknown; an arena where gesture becomes geography, colour becomes emotion, and abstraction becomes a language of its own unrestrained logic. These water colour and mixed-media surfaces carry forward his lifelong fidelity to nature, but they no longer describe it; they distill it.

 Arist: Dadasaheb Yadav 

The works surge with washes of violet, viridian, cobalt, cadmium gold, and sudden explosions of black; strokes that feel like weather rather than depiction. Yadav has always been an artist tuned into elemental rhythms. Here, those rhythms unspool into pure energy. The paintings breathe in gradients, drips, and splashes, suggesting the moment before a storm breaks, the hush between waves, the twilight blur of sky dissolving into land. But this time, the harmony he invokes is not pastoral; it is kinetic, restless, charged with the honesty of lived experience. These abstractions demonstrate an artist unafraid to cut away the literal. What remains is an emotional architecture: atmospheres rather than landscapes, sensations rather than scenes. The viewer is invited into a space where colour becomes memory, movement becomes intuition, and the boundary between internal and external worlds collapses. This is harmony understood not as quietude, but as equilibrium born out of flux, nature’s true state.

Yadav’s mature confidence is evident in his handling of fluid media: bleeding edges that resist containment, fields of pigment that collide yet hold their ground. His gestures feel both spontaneous and inevitable, as if the work knows how to form itself. The paintings echo the lineage of abstract expressionism yet remain unmistakably rooted in his own sensibility, devotional to nature but no longer beholden to its forms.

In these works, Dadasaheb Yadav offers viewers not a window to the world but a mirror to their own internal weather. The visual intensity, the chromatic rush, the raw immediacy, all converge into a profound reminder that harmony is not found; it is felt, encountered, and made anew each time the colours meet.

Sushma Sabnis -Mumbai

November 2025 - 

From: 24th to 30th November 2025 -“The Pulse of Harmony”

Solo Show of Paintings By well-known artist Dadasaheb Yadav

Jehangir Art Gallery,161-B, M.G. Road,Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001Timing -11am to 7pm.

Aakriti Art Gallery Kicks Off 20th Anniversary Celebrations with Gurucharan Singh Exhibition

Kolkata, 20 November 2025 — Aakriti Art Gallery, one of Kolkata’s leading contemporary art spaces, launched its landmark 20th anniversary celebrations with the inauguration of A World Made Visible, a solo exhibition of recent works by renowned artist Gurucharan Singh, on Wednesday evening.

 Prayag Shukla and Gurucharan Singh

Curated by noted poet and art critic Prayag Shukla, the exhibition opened to a packed house of art lovers, collectors, artists, and literary figures. The event, held at the gallery’s premises at 12/3A Hungerford Street, turned into a vibrant gathering of Kolkata’s cultural community.

The highlight of the evening was a rare live drawing session by the artist himself. In a deeply engaging gesture, Gurucharan Singh unveiled the show not with a speech, but through the spontaneous act of creation—sketching directly onto canvas in front of the assembled audience. The drawing, composed in bold strokes of charcoal, depicted a layered composition of architectural and human forms, emblematic of the themes explored in the exhibition.

“To witness Gurucharan Singh draw live was to watch decades of artistic thought unfold in real time,” said one of the attendees. “It felt deeply personal, like an offering to the viewers.”

The exhibition features Singh’s recent body of work—complex, vibrant, and rooted in a narrative style that blends myth, memory, and lived experience. His visual language, marked by angular figures, architectural motifs, and a subtle interplay of light and gesture, continues to evolve while maintaining its contemplative depth.

In his curatorial note, Prayag Shukla described the exhibition as “an act of revelation—where the artist allows us to see the visible and the imagined in the same breath.”

The inauguration marks the beginning of a year-long celebration by Aakriti Art Gallery, which has played a pioneering role in promoting modern and contemporary Indian art since its founding in 2005.

“This is not just an exhibition—it is the first of many events that will celebrate our two-decade journey with artists and collectors,” said Vikram Bachhawat, Director of Aakriti Art Gallery. “We are honoured to begin the celebrations with a master like Gurucharan Singh.”

The exhibition A World Made Visible will remain open for public viewing in the coming weeks. Entry is free and all are welcome.

Aakriti Art Gallery (AAG)

Address: Orbit Enclave, 12/3a, Picasso Bithi, Mullick Bazar, Park Street area, Kolkata, West Bengal 700017

Phone: 033 2289 3027

A SOLO SHOW BY ABHISHEK SALVE - NIPPON SOLO MUMBAI

 Coming soon

@fankaar_abhi @_shravani_chavan_

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“Echoes of Silence” An Exhibition of Photographs By Eminent Photographer Dev Inder in Jehangir Art Gallery

 Dev Inder - The Silent Lens

In the corridors of my art college, where the smell of pigments and turpentine often lingered in the air, there was a man whose presence was as subtle as it was profound  Dev Inder Singh, he came to us as a teacher of the Punjabi language. His voice carried neither the weight of authority nor the pressure of command. Instead, he spoke with the gentleness of flowing water, soft and steady, as if each syllable he uttered had been tested in the silence of his heart before touching the air.

 Dev Inder

Dev Inder Singh is a man of few words, and those few words matter. It is as if he believes language is not meant to scatter recklessly like dry leaves in the wind, but to be placed with care, like flowers offered in prayer. He carries himself with an awareness so refined that even while speaking a single word, he seems to weigh its effect, as though a careless sound could make the flowers tremble or the leaves fall.

His photography, though he rarely speaks about it, is another form of silence. Through the lens, he captures what words cannot carry. Just as he uses language sparingly, he uses light, shadow, and moment with the same precision. His art is not about grandeur but about seeing, seeing with humility, with patience, with the same care he gives to words.

In my memory of him, there are no long lectures or loud expressions. There is only the quiet presence of a man whose wisdom is not in what he says, but in how he says it. He shows us that to speak softly is not weakness, but strength; that to live with awareness is the highest form of artistry. To us, he is less a teacher of language and more a teacher of life, a teacher of silence-the greatest strength of all great visualization.

Like the whisper of a hymn that lingers long after the sound has faded,  Dev Inder Singh remains in my heart-a reminder that silence itself is a language, and that the truest art begins not with paint or camera, but with the awareness of a single word. A man of few words, his voice is a hymn-soft as incense rising, gentle as a river turning. A disciple of the Guru, he whispers language like prayer, never to wound, only to heal.

Through his lens, he does not capture, he receives. His photographs are haikus, few lines of eternity, where clouds carry messages unknown, trees dance in joy, leaves descend as blessings, and shadows sing in praise, writing calligraphic forms with black ink upon the ground. Light itself becomes his storyteller, revealing the momentary flame of being-fragile, fleeting, yet radiant as creation's smile.

He wanders not as conqueror, but as pilgrim-eyes half-closed, surrendered, wondering at the vast play of the world, smiling at its mystery. From him we learn that silence is a language, that words can be prayers, that photographs can be hymns, and that the truest art is reverence.

- Sidharth

12th to 18th November 2025

“Echoes of Silence”

An Exhibition of Photographs

By Eminent Photographer Dev Inder

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

Terrace Gallery

161-B, M.G. Road

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm

Contact: +91 9872401204

“UTKARSA” Celebrating JMS Mani’s Mastery (1948-2021) Art Exhibition in Jehangir Art Gallery

This Show will be inaugurated on 11^th November at 5pm by Honourable Guests Mr. Anant Nikam(Veteran print maker, artist and former HOD all department of Sir J.J. School of Arts), Mr. Gourmoni Das(Director & Founder of Nine Fish Gallery and Dot Line Space Foundation) in the August presence of Rajesh & Ranjitha S, S & D of JMS Mani.

JMS Mani

UTKARSA marks a sincere tribute to the life and creative legacy of J. M. S. Mani (1948–2021), one of Karnataka’s most revered modern artists and a transformative educator. Curated by Darshan Kumar YU, Curator(Muesmuseologist), artist & Thinker, Omit Curator NGMA, Bengaluru, and presented by JMS Mani’s family, this posthumous exhibition draws together key works spanning his iconic Badami series, expressive landscapes, and sensitive charcoal and mixed-media drawings and sketches, offering Mumbai audiences an intimate encounter with an artist who shaped both canvas and community.

His first solo show happened in Jehangir Art Gallery in 70’s.

 

Rooted in a rigorous academic foundation, Mani’s early practice honed traditional disciplines of light, form and perspective, later blossoming into an intuitive painterly vocabulary that balanced realism, symbolism and emotional intensity. His celebrated Badami series remains central to Indian art discourse, elongated rural figures, dusky-skinned, rendered with sincerity and grace, their gestures carrying the poetry of daily labour and social memory. These works reaffirm Mani’s lifelong conviction that dignity lives in the ordinary and beauty in lived experience. Equally powerful are Mani’s landscape studies, from the atmospheric ruins of Hampi to abstracted chromatic vistas, where nature becomes metaphor for time, memory and the human spirit. His drawings, often executed in charcoal, reveal a master draftsman able to distill emotion through line alone, capturing movement, fragility and stillness in equal measure. Throughout his evolving practice, Mani cultivated his studio as a sanctuary of creativity and learning, a space meticulously organised yet spirited, where students, artists and grandchildren entered freely. As a devoted teacher and principal at Ken School of Art, he encouraged experimentation, peer support and the courage to think beyond conventions. His belief in nurturing the next generation remains one of his greatest contributions to Indian art.

UTKARṢA honours not only a master painter but a mentor whose life’s work embodies artistic excellence, humility, and the deep conviction that art must stay rooted in humanity. This exhibition invites Mumbai art lovers to celebrate a legacy that continues to inspire—quietly, fiercely, and with unwavering devotion to the creative flame.

 

Sushma Sabnis

Mumbai

 From: 11^th to 17^th November 2025

“UTKARSA”

Celebrating JMS Mani’s Mastery (1948-2021)

 

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

161-B, M.G. Road,

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm

Contact: +91 9886598387, +91 9538449359

“Aawaran” Solo Show of Paintings by contemporary artist Sonu Gupta at Jehangir Art Gallery

Sonu Gupta’s solo exhibition ‘Aawaran’ moves like a quiet blade through the theatre of human psychology. These works aren't content with surface aesthetics; they pierce the soft underbelly of identity, asking the viewer to confront their many selves; the borrowed masks, the inherited fears, the curated performances we stitch into our skin simply to survive society. Gupta does not lecture; he reveals. Patiently. Relentlessly. With tenderness and unease in equal measure.

Artist: Sonu Gupta

The figures here hover between flesh and fiction. The artist realistically rendered their bodies, but their presence dissolves into abstraction, as if memory itself is glitching. Masks appear not as props, but as organs we have grown used to breathing through. Some are stark white, sterile and compliant; others burn with ornamental complexity, as though the mind’s labyrinth has finally broken the skin. There is a ritualistic undertone, a soft echo of purification rites shadowed by the modern fatigue of having to constantly recalibrate one’s face for the world.

 

Gupta’s palette, warm and muted, feels ancient and digital at once, earth and algorithm in conversation. These blurred edges and pixelated textures quietly insist that identity today is never fully analog, never fully sincere. We live filtered. We feel edited. We unmask only when absolutely necessary, and even then we tremble.

 

Aawaran acknowledges veils exist, not just to deceive but to protect, nurture, and incubate. Just as soil holds the seed and night shelters the dawn, these human masks sometimes prevent us from shattering. The exhibition’s deepest argument whispered, not shouted, is that vulnerability is a pilgrimage. Peeling away the layers is not a dramatic act of exposure, but a slow devotion to truth.

 

In a world obsessed with hyper-visibility and polished personas, Sonu Gupta invites us to pause. To breathe. To ask the uncomfortable question: When all the layers fall, who remains? And perhaps more importantly, are we ready to meet them?

 

Sushma Sabnis

Mumbai

 From: 10^th to 16^th November 2025

“Aawaran” 

Solo Show of Paintings by contemporary artist Sonu Gupta

 

VENUE:

Sonu Gupta

161-B, M.G. Road

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm 

+91 8767017725

Gurcharan Singh – A World Made Visible

Aakriti Art Gallery is proud to announce Gurcharan Singh – A World Made Visible, a solo exhibition of recent paintings by the acclaimed Indian artist Gurcharan Singh, curated by distinguished art critic and poet Prayag Shukla. The exhibition opens on 19 November 2025 and will be on view until 7 December at Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata.

Gurcharan Singh, born in 1949 in Patiala, is celebrated for his deeply humanistic figurative works that transform everyday life into visual poetry. Over five decades, he has developed a signature style that draws from Indian miniature painting, folk traditions, and modernist sensibilities, capturing the quiet theatre of the street, the courtyard, the veranda, and the marketplace. In his world, street performers, vendors, children, animals, gods, and lovers coexist in vibrant harmony—depicted with empathy, colour, and lyrical grace.

This exhibition presents a new body of work that continues Singh’s exploration of the ordinary as extraordinary. With bold forms, flattened perspectives, and symbolic detail, these paintings immerse the viewer in a world that is both familiar and timeless. As Singh himself reflects, “This is my world made visible from the invisible.”

Curator Prayag Shukla notes, “Gurcharan’s art does not impose spectacle—it invites reflection. His figures breathe, dream, and dwell in spaces that reflect not only social life, but emotional and philosophical depth. His recent works reaffirm his place among India’s most sincere and evocative painters.”

Singh’s works have been exhibited extensively in India and abroad, including the Tokyo Biennale, the Seoul Contemporary Art Show, and the Festival of India in the USSR. His paintings are part of major collections including the National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi), the Museum of Non-Aligned Countries (Yugoslavia), and the Birla Academy of Art & Culture (Kolkata).

Exhibition Details:

Title: Gurcharan Singh – A World Made Visible

Dates: 19 November – 7 December 2025

Venue: Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata

Curator: Prayag Shukla

For media inquiries, interviews, or high-resolution images, please contact:

N.G.Rao

admin@aakritiartgallery.com

 +91-9830411115

 www.aakritiartgallery.com