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Singer Arjun Sapkota and lyricist Santosh Sapkota have released a new music video titled ‘Baseu Alakkai’. The song features female singer Shanti Shree Pariyar alongside Arjun Sapkota, Garima Sharma, and Biraj Banskota in the cast. 

The music is composed by Arjun Sapkota, with arrangement, mixing, and mastering handled by HBN Kismat. Recordist Raj Khadka contributes to the production. Additionally, instrumentalists include Madan Regmi on Madal, Hemanta Kanchha Rasaily on Sarangi, and Gopal Dev on Flute. The music video has featured Shibu Pandey and Badal Ghimire as guest artists. 

With the song, Santosh Sapkota has debuted as a songwriter. Santosh, now 26, has also been working as a social media manager for several well-known faces in Nepal and India.

Born in Parbat, Santosh completed his schooling in Rupandehi and moved to Bangalore, India, to receive a diploma in mechanical engineering in 2013. Little did he know that his career would totally change. Completing the diploma in 2015, Santosh worked for two years in Bangalore as a service supervisor in Sri Manjunatha Pipes and returned to Nepal in 2018. In Nepal, he got his hands on a job as a service advisor in one of the companies of Agni Group, namely Agni Motoinc Pvt Ltd. But things took a different route in 2017 when he became an admin of the Facebook fan page for Arujn Sapkota, his cousin who had started his journey as a Nepali folk singer. He was unable to complete his engineering studies due to some family and financial issues. Nevertheless, he had not lost his hope.

Santosh’s journey showcases the unpredictable paths life can take. Despite facing challenges and detours, he found a new passion in songwriting. 

Weekends are meant for some much-needed rest and relaxation. And what better way could there be to unwind than watch a feel-good movie while having something you’ve been craving all week. Here, we recommend our top three favorites.

Is Love Enough? Sir (2018) 

Romance | Drama

Run time: 1h 39m

Directed by Rohena Gera

Starring Tillotama Shome, Vivek Gomber

Rohena Gera’s ‘Is Love Enough? Sir’ features an uncommon love story between two different people. The independent drama follows an unlikely romance between a rich architect and a poor maid. The movie had an initial premiere at Cannes Film Festival in 2018 and was later released in theaters. It’s a slow movie that doesn’t bore you at any point. You enjoy getting to know the characters and the plot is so well crafted that you feel like you are watching something happen in real life.

Ratna, works as a maid servant for Ashwin, the wealthy son of a builder. Ratna is working hard to send her sister to college as well as nurturing dreams to become a fashion designer. Ashwin, following his broken engagement, is lost and trying to figure things out. He falls in love with Ratna—he feels there’s something that he has never felt before. His friend tries to dissuade him from pursuing the relationship and even Ratna thinks he’s just looking for physical intimacy and pushes him away. What slowly unravels is each discovering themselves as well as finding out what we look for when we seek love.

Angrezi Medium (2020)

Comedy | Drama

Run time: 2h 25m

Directed by Homi Adajania

Starring Irrfan Khan, Radhika Madan, Kareena Kapoor

Starring Irrfan Khan, ‘Angrezi Medium’ is about the lengths a father can go to for his daughter. When his daughter decides to study in London, a hardworking Rajasthani businessman does everything in power to make her dreams come true. It’s a standalone sequel to the 2017 movie, Hindi Medium. This is also Irrfan’s final movie before his death in April 2020.

Though we must admit that it’s not as good as Hindi Medium (or Irrfan’s other movies for that matter) watching the actor light up the screen, despite his medical condition and the fact that he did the movie while undergoing treatment for cancer, makes it a bittersweet moment. We couldn’t take our eyes off him. He’s done justice to his role and carried the story forward in a way no other actor could have. The writing has its weak moments but the plot makes you laugh and cry and moves you in ways only good cinema can.

Damsel (2024) 

Fantasy | Action

Run time: 1h 50m

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

Starring Millie Bobby Brown, Nick Robinson, Angela Bassett​​​​​​​

Millie Bobby Brown is a British actress who gained recognition for playing Eleven in the Netflix science fiction series Stranger Things. She received nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards. Brown has also starred in the monster film Godzilla: King of the Monsters and its sequel Godzilla vs. Kong. Her spy thriller series, Enola Holmes (Part one and two), was also hugely popular. But that’s not what we are recommending you to watch (though you must if you haven’t already).

Her latest release, Damsel, sees her set into the role of a young woman who agrees to marry a handsome prince, only to discover it was all a trap. The royal family has been cursed and they must sacrifice someone (of royal blood) to a dragon that lives down in a cave. The family first gets the prince married off and then sacrifices the bride, following a ritual to make her royalty. Elodie (Brown) is thrown into a cave with a fire-breathing dragon and must rely solely on her wits and will to survive. It’s a fun movie to watch when you don’t want to think too much about a story and just want to kill some time during the weekend.

Singer Hemant Sharma has released a new song titled ‘Dharti Mathi Jun,’ featuring the collaboration of singer Bindu Paudel. The song, with lyrics and music by Deepak Sharma and composition by Narendra Biyogi, follows the success of Sharma’s previous release, ‘Uta Pareli Jhim Jhim,’ in partnership with Paudel.

The music video of this song showcases actor Anoop Bikram Shahi, marking the first-time collaboration with model Kabita Nepali. Despite Shahi’s rare appearances in music videos, he expressed his fondness for the song, motivating his participation.

Shyam Swet Rasaili handled the mixing and mastering of the track, while Nabraj Upreti did the video’s cinematography. Amrit Chapagain took charge of the editing, and the direction of the video was executed by Mausam Himali.

A fine documentary film about two lonely, elderly women of Dhorpatan is about to end its splendid month-long run in a cinema theatre this Saturday. There is still time to go watch the lives of Ratima and Kalima, Bisowkarma ladies who guard a village when everyone else has moved down to the ‘aul’ for the winter.

The showing of ‘Dhorpatan – No Winter Holidays’ is at the multiplex on the 8th floor or CTC Mall, Sundhara, next to the Jagannath Temple at the top of the Thapathali slope.

The village of Pakhathar in Dhorpatan’s expansive elevated valley is peopled over the bitterly cold months by just the two women, both widows of a popular local man who died nearly a decade ago. They are adversaries forced by circumstance to support and comfort each other, living in adjacent houses in the company of a cow, a dog, a pet cockerel, and a flock of pitch-black ravens that provide constant background cackle.

And forever there is the accompaniment of clouds surging up-valley to this part of Dhorpatan. The fog bellows up from Bobang, pushed by winds that howl through the window slats and shake the rafters, and at other times bring soft snow that settle on the roof eaves and fences of stone. They also provide lovely shadows on the wide terraces that the women guard, and sometimes darkness at noon.

Dhorpatan entered national consciousness in August 1962, when a Dakota airliner of Royal Nepal Airlines headed from Kathmandu to Delhi crashed here, killing all including the Nepali Ambassador to India, Nar Pratap Thapa. A smaller Pilatus aircraft which went on a search-and-rescue mission met with a similar fate here.

Life has not changed much in Pakhathar Tole in the six decades since, other than a micro-hydro plant that brings weak electricity and a jeepable road that the village folk use for transhumance.

At a time when all the talk is of abandoned terraces and out-migration, the story crafted by documentarists Rajan Kathet and Sunir Pandey is about two who stayed. Theirs is a barter arrangement where villagers going down to Bobang give Ratima and Kolima grain and produce in exchange for guarding over their properties.

If you believe Ratima, Kolima is crafty, loud and self-centered, a ‘sauteni’ who throws rocks on her roof at nights after altercations. Ratima is unwell, walks with difficulty, and (says Kolima) drinks more raksi than is good for her. Ratima takes strength from the belief that her late husband loved her even after fathering a child with Kolima. In her dreams, she walks together with her husband towards a bridge, he crosses over but she falls into the torrent. ‘Kasto bhainthyo hola’ she wonders—how life would have been had he still been alive.

For a friend, Ratima has a stately red rooster who is tied to his mistress with a long string. When it gets cold, Ratima snuggles him inside a blanket all his own. While the elder woman mostly stays indoors, Kolima is the active one, forever chasing after Mali the Cow, tracing her up-valley from the hoofmarks on the snow. She also has her daughter for company, down in the ‘aul’, with whom she connects on her mobile phone and provides long-distance child-rearing advice.

Both ladies complain about the other to the filmmakers, who remain discreetly off camera. The elder calls the younger (nearly) a slut, and ‘drunkard’ is the counter. But they have no choice but to assist each other through the winter, sharing a hearth, meals and gossip of times past.

Filmmakers Kathet and Pandey report that Ratima is no more, a departure one could see coming in the documentary given her difficult breathing and uneasy sleep. Ratima has crossed the saangu to meet her waiting husband on the other side.