Product Code Database
Yasser Usman (born 1980s) is an Indian television journalist, author, news presenter, and biographer. He began his career by working as a television presenter and was awarded the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for his contribution. Usman has been recognised by the media as one of India's most successful film biographers.
As a biographer, Usman's meticulously researched books primarily focus on the great cinematic journeys of stars, delving not only into their stardom but also their turbulent personal lives and tragic downfalls.
His latest biography is . Before this book, Usman wrote the Untold trilogy, a series of three biographies on Hindi cinema- Bollywood. It started with (2014), which marked his debut as a biographer, and concluded with (2018). Along with (2016), Rajesh Khanna was nominated for the Crossword Book Award.
In January 2025, Usman's first work of fiction, a crime novel called As Dark As Blood was published by Simon & Schuster.
In his stints with IBN7, Star News, ABP Network and CricketnMore, Yasser worked on implementing digital-first strategies. As the editorial in-charge and lead producer of 120+ large-scale television series, he won market-leading awards like the Ramnath Goenka Award for excellence in journalism, Red Ink Awards, News Television (NT) award (thrice), and the Indian Telly award.
In 2022, Usman joined CricketnMore.com, the award-winning multilingual sports website (Cricket, Football, Tennis, Badminton, Kabaddi, etc) as the Consulting Editor and Digital Content Strategist. Working towards product development, he launched many new digital shows and conceptualized content which contributed towards high viewership and digital success. He hosted a show Cricket Tales With Yasser Usman from London. The series covers interesting stories from the world of cricket.
In 2023, Usman started working as a Columnist writing on cinema for Khaleej Times, UAE's longest-running English daily newspaper, published in Dubai.
In 2024, Usman began writing about Indian cinema for the BBC and BBC Hindi. He also presented a special video series on Bollywood for BBC Hindi. He is also currently serving as a consultant across the entertainment, sports, and news genres.
Usman also contributes to NDTV India as a columnist and author, exploring the intersections of cinema and popular culture through his writings.
Usman's next book, , is about the actress Rekha. The second biography of the actress after Mohan Deep's Eurekha! (1999), Usman's one-year research for this work included collecting archives of magazine issues about Rekha and interviewing her contemporaries, around 40 to 50 people.:x–xii The Asian Age Nayare Ali wrote it as "a book that anyone who is a fan or even fascinated by the star, would be tempted to read". Rohini Nair of Firstpost saw the book reveals nothing "untold" about the actress, and felt Usman relied entirely on the existing sources. Sowmya Rajendran from The News Minute wrote positively of the book's prose, calling it "fast-paced and lucidly written with plenty of spice, making it a perfect airplane read".
Usman's other two books: and , also garnered a generally positive reception. Published in 2018, the former details the life of the actor Sanjay Dutt and is the last of his Untold trilogy, reflecting the use of the word "untold" in the title of Usman's first three books. It was controversial after Dutt decried that the book was published without his authorisation. Mint Sanjukta Sharma praised Usman's deep research and his neutral point of view, and Film Companion listed it as one of the "top seven books on cinema of the year".
, released in 2021 by Simon & Schuster, describes the life of the filmmaker Guru Dutt. It was after watching Dutt's films at the 2004 Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema when Usman was motivated to write about him. While researching for the book, Usman was met with the lack of free-domain archives of Dutt's interviews. Writing for The Hindu, Mini Anthikad Chhibber appreciated the book's remembrances by Dutt's sister, the artist Lalita Lajmi. In his review for Business Standard, the reviewer Chintan Girish Modi wrote, " Guru Dutt: An Unfinished Story is a moving account of a creative genius who was influenced by Hollywood melodrama, German expressionism, Bhakti poetry, and the Bauls of Bengal." Sathya Saran of The New Indian Express, however, gave a scathing review. The Hindustan Times featured the book in their "The Most Interesting Reads of the Week" listing, and The Telegraph included it in their year-end "Page Turners of 2021". Asian Voice (London) praised the book saying, "a mirror that reflects the hard-hitting realities of cinema ever since its inception. It is a narrative that shatters the myths, the rose-tinted glasses with which we as viewers look up to the film industry."
|
|
