Bilal Qureshi

Toronto is a spectacularly international city, which makes it an especially rich market for Asian cinema. Asian films brought a new brand of raw and gritty realism to this year's Toronto International Film Festival, as NPR's Bilal Qureshi reports.

Jism 2 has been met with protests and bans and has forced the country to talk more openly about sex.

Some are thinking about how to balance their faith with the danger of being attacked.

On her new album, Traveller, Shankar goes back in time to make connections between India and Spain.

The Indian-American composer discusses writing for film, and explains how traveling alone from New York to India and back helped inspire his newest album.

With his intense stage presence and relentless drive to improve, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan single-handedly brought Qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music, to the West and the non-Muslim world. In the process, he influenced an unlikely array of music around the world.

The composer is at the forefront of a movement to capture the sound of the new Britain — a place that's home to a young generation with roots in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Nitin Sawhney's latest album is called London Undersound.

Every summer, Charlottesville, Va., hosts an annual Woodstock of sorts for photography lovers and practitioners called the Look3 Festival of the Photograph. One of the most popular exhibits — YourSpace — celebrates the achievements of everyday photographers.

Bars like Whitlow's on Wilson near Washington, D.C., are drawing crowds with an increasingly popular video game called Rock Band. Players can take the stage as rock stars — singing or playing guitar, drums or bass to their favorite hits.

On Thursday, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan following an eight-year, self-imposed exile. The night before, The Leopard and the Fox opened in New York. It tells the story of Bhutto's father, Pakistan's first democratically elected leader.