India, Aug. 2 -- Few films are meant to be watched. Others enter like breath held too long -slow and searing - like red dye bleeding into water. Crimson Red, directed by Cunal Ranjan, slips into that rare space where cinema begins to speak in the language of art.

At the centre is Basudev Bhargav, a painter shaped not by narrative arc but by encounters that leave an aftertaste. Actor Siddhant Karnick plays him with a sensitivity that feels lived in. There is no theatricality, only a quiet erosion. "Playing Basudev was a journey inward," he shared. "He's a man shaped by his longing, haunted by memory, and driven by beauty. I've never done a role like this before." The muses - Sarah Jane Dias, Pooja Bhamrah, and Sanya Sagar, move through th...