Weekender: 1970s Mumbai, NFTs and Jackass

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Brazen Weekender! This is Bradley Hope, your loyal servant, and this is the newsletter where I share what the team has been watching, reading and listening to this week.

📺 First up, here’s what we’ve been watching this week

Sister Midnight (Film, 2025) – This genre-bending indie gem from director Karan Kandhari took us by surprise. Sister Midnight starts as a slice-of-life drama about a mismatched young couple in 1970s Mumbai – timid Uma (a luminous Radhika Apte) and her awkward new husband Gopal – crammed into a one-room shack and clearly in over their heads. At first, the film revels in vivid everyday details of their working-class neighborhood; the frame bursts with color, crowds, and the claustrophobia of city life. You can practically feel the humid midnights Uma endures, wandering the streets in a mix of loneliness and wonder.

But just when you think you know where it’s headed, Sister Midnight goes completely off the rails – in the best way. No spoilers here, but the tonal shift is wild (think Parasite levels of unexpected!) yet somehow earned by the emotional groundwork laid early on. One minute you’re watching a tender character study; the next, it’s a feverish cocktail of thriller and dark fantasy.