Stargazer: Ishaan Khatter, Geetanjali Kulkarni and Sonali Bendre

Jury Duty

At the forthcoming Biarritz Film Festival—Nouvelles Vagues 2026, Ishaan Khatter will join actor-director Kristen Stewart on the jury panel. The jury for the festival’s fourth edition will be chaired by Stewart, with Khatter joining an international lineup that includes Canadian actor Whitney Peak, French actor-director Raphaël Quenard, French filmmaker Nathan Ambrosioni, French actor Suzy Bemba, Italian filmmaker Carolina Cavalli, and British actor Esmé Creed-Miles. Earlier this year, Khatter also became the only Indian male actor to feature on the Gold House Gold 100 list, further rein­forcing his growing international recognition. His jury appointment comes soon after Payal Kapadia headed the Critics’ Week jury at the Cannes film festival.

Dramatic Season

It has been a good week for Geetanjali Kulkarni. Not only was she magnificent in Netflix’s new film Maa Behen as Madhuri Dixit’s nosy neighbour but Kulkarni has also returned to the last season of SonyLIV’s beloved Gullak, as the hardworking, hard-pressed mother, Shanti Mishra. The actor, trained at the National School of Drama and working in Marathi and Hindi films and series, is known to be a chameleon on screen.

Mother Courage

Sonali Bendre was best known as a glamour girl in commercial Hindi cinema, with hits such as Sarfarosh in 1999 and the 2001 comedy Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega. Next week, she will be seen in an all-new ava­tar in Prosit Roy’s Raakh on Prime Video as the grief-stricken mother of two children who are kidnapped. This series is based on the infa­mous Sanjay and Geeta Chopra murders in Delhi in 1978.