Sister Midnight (in-person & online)

Radhika Apte, Ashok Pathak, Chhaya Kadam

Just arrived in Mumbai, living in a tiny shack with paper-thin walls, acerbic Uma (a terrific Radhika Apte) and soft-spoken Gopal (Ashok Pathak) are trapped in a very new, very awkward arranged marriage. At first, Uma does her best to cope with the heat, her lack of domestic skills, her bumbling spouse and their nosy neighbours, but the nocturnal world of the city changes her. Transformed into a disturbing and ruthless figure, Uma succumbs to her most feral impulses.

Writer-director Karan Kandhari’s feature debut, screened in Director’s Fortnight at Cannes 2024, Sister Midnight is a surreal, punkish and distinctive comedy packed with stylistic digressions including a wide-ranging soundtrack, tightly edited and framed visual compositions that recall Wes Anderson’s filmography, and sequences of stop motion animation. Boosted by Apte’s gift for physical comedy, it’s an audacious and idiosyncratic story about a woman fighting patriarchal norms and their far-reaching effects.