Hollywood
Fox pushes ‘Independence Day 2’ to 2016
MUMBAI: The world will have to wait another year for its Independence Day 2. Fox has announced that it is moving the long pending sequel from 3 July 2015 – a date it had announced in June – to 1 July 2016.
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That means the Roland Emmerich-helmed pic will arrive exactly 20 years and one day after the blockbuster original, which made a movie star of Will Smith. The sequel will go up against another bombing-themed movie Sony’s Angry Birds.
Hollywood
Who is Geeta Gandbhir? The director behind two separate Oscar-nominated films in one historic year
The Emmy-winning filmmaker makes history with dual documentary nominations at this year’s Oscars.
LOS ANGELES: If Hollywood loves a breakout moment, this year it belongs to Geeta Gandbhir. Long respected within documentary circles, Gandbhir has suddenly become a mainstream name after scoring two Oscar nominations in the same season, one for a feature and one for a short. It is a rare feat. It is historic. And it has prompted one big question: who exactly is the filmmaker behind this double triumph?
Before stepping into the director’s chair, Gandbhir built her reputation as a razor-sharp editor. That technical grounding shaped her storytelling style, which is precise, unsentimental and emotionally direct. Her early career included working alongside Spike Lee, an apprenticeship that sharpened both her political lens and cinematic instincts.
Over the years, she accumulated multiple Emmy Awards and a Peabody, quietly becoming one of the most respected nonfiction voices in American television.
Her feature-length nominee, The Perfect Neighbor, released on Netflix, investigates the fatal shooting of Ajike Owens through stark police body-cam footage. The film strips away dramatic embellishment and instead relies on unfiltered visual evidence to confront viewers with uncomfortable truths.
At the same time, her short film The Devil Is Busy, streaming on HBO Max, offers an intimate, ground-level look inside an abortion clinic in Atlanta. Co-directed with Christalyn Hampton, it trades scale for immediacy and delivers impact in under an hour.
The contrast between the two projects, one investigative and expansive, the other intimate and observational, highlights Gandbhir’s range. Yet both share a common thread, which is a focus on lived reality rather than spectacle.
Documentary filmmaking is often seen as awards adjacent and respected but rarely spotlighted. Gandbhir’s dual nomination changes that narrative. It positions her not just as a contender, but as a defining nonfiction voice of her generation.
Whether she takes home one statuette or two, the achievement itself has already reshaped the Oscar conversation and cemented her place in film history.
