MUBI is teaming up with the London Indian Film Festival (site), running through July, to present two films from the lineup for free. In Gaurav Pandey's Dry Red Chillies, viewable everywhere in the world but the US and Canada, a middle-aged actor who's only appeared on screen as an extra for decades, finally gets his big break. It's a conscious nod to Satyajit Ray's The Philosopher's Stone (1958). The lead's played by Mithun Chakraborty, who tells the Times of India that the film is "about the dream of a common man, its not about me. The life of a common man is just like dry red chillies which do not have a taste of their own but are used to add flavor to the dish being prepared."
The LIFF on Dr Biju Kumar's The Way Home (image above), viewable only in the UK: "Malayalam cinema's young heartthrob Prithviraj plays a Delhi-based prison doctor who accedes to the dying wish of his patient, a member of a terrorist squad. Her wish is that he unites her five-year-old son with his father whom he has never seen. The trouble is that the father is the leader of a dreaded Indian Jihadi terrorist group."