International Film: Joana Hadjithomas and Lin-Manuel Miranda

This week on The Cultural Frontline, Anu Anand talks to Joana Hadjithomas, who along with her filmmaking partner Khalil Joreige, use their art to question the role of memory and history. Joana tells us about her own personal journals and tapes from the early 1980s, made during the Lebanese Civil War, which inspired her latest film Memory Box.

The award winning actor, playwright, director and film producer Lin-Manuel Miranda, known for his musicals In the Heights, the smash hit Hamilton and his latest Tick Tick…Boom, shares with us the musical that first influenced him – Les Misérables.

With increasing tension between the studios of India’s film industry and Narendra Modi’s BJP government, amidst reports of growing Islamophobia across the country, writer and cultural commentator Sandip Roy explains the history of the relationship between the Indian government and the country’s film industry

And Filippo Scotti, who stars in the new autobiographical film, The Hand of God, by the Academy Award winning Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, speaks about his role and his admiration for Paolo as a filmmaker.

(Photo: Lin-Manuel Miranda. Credit: Monica Schipper)