Starring: Freida Pinto, Riz Ahmed, Roshan Seth

Starring: Mickey Rourke, Henry Cavill, Freida Pinto

In just three years, Freida Pinto has turned from 'Slumdog' neopphyte into one of Hollywood's hottest properties, witha starring role in the new 'Planet of the Apes' reboot. But, she reveals to Sam Peters, she was more than happy to shoot her latest film back in India

"I need direction," whines Gemma Jones's jilted wife to a swami (Pauline Collins).

Starring: Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins

One of the strongest debuts of 2010, this bittersweet Mumbai tale of high minds and low plots never quite won the plaudits it deserves. Now – with a more populist, even Slumdog Millionaire-ish cover - it has a second chance.

For Phyllida Lloyd, the decision must have been straightforward. Not only has she worked with Meryl Streep before, but she knows that – in casting the Oscar-winner as Margaret Thatcher in the forthcoming biopic Iron Lady – she is almost guaranteed a hit. Streep, after all, is both extremely famous and extremely bankable. Last year Forbes named her the seventh best value-for-money star in Hollywood. The third woman on the list, she was trumped only by Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Aniston. She is, at least on the face of things, a pretty sound bit of casting.

The star tells Gill Pringle why critics are wrong to sneer at an Indian actress being cast in the role of an Arab girl in Miral

The indian actress Freida Pinto and Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal attend the premiere of Miral at the 54th British Film Institute London Film Festival at the Vue West End cinema last night. Pinto, 26, who made her name in the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, plays the lead in Jebreal's autobiographical story of an orphaned Palestinian girl's experiences of the first Arab-Israeli war. Ian Gavan/Getty Images

American artist-turned film-maker Julian Schnabel follows up on his intimate and claustrophobic The Diving Bell and the Butterly (about a stroke victim) with a full-blown epic looking at the Palestinian struggle from 1948 until the mid-1990s. Miral is plodding at times, choppily edited and unevenly performed. It has very little of the aesthetic polish of Schnabel's earlier work and the director is bound to be accused by his critics of political naivete. However, it's also a courageous and groundbreaking film. There aren't any other movies that spring to mind from Oscar-nominated directors that look at post-war Middle Eastern history from the point of view of Palestinian women.

Woody's bright and breezy tale has a heart of darkness

British director Mike Leigh's new film, Another Year, is in the running for the Cannes Film Festival's top prize the Palme d'Or, it was announced today.