It is the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) fiftieth yr. The good event to have fun the truth that there’s a document 17 movies (together with a collection) in the official choice from India, South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora, on this yr’s version, on from September 4 to 14.
TIFF is particularly valued, because it each flags off the awards season (Oscars, Golden Globes) and is a vital gateway to the North American market. For occasion, Payal Kapadia’s movie All We Imagine as Light, following its screening at Cannes and TIFF final yr, received two Golden Globe nominations for Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film. Kapadia additionally garnered plenty of consideration worldwide throughout her Academy Awards marketing campaign though her movie didn’t win an Oscar.
S.S. Rajamouli’s Telugu blockbuster RRR had already had a theatrical launch in India and in the U.S., however as part of the movie’s concerted Oscar marketing campaign, the director was interviewed at TIFF in the Visionaries collection in 2022. RRR went on to win an Oscar for Best Original Song, in addition to a Golden Globe in the identical class.
(L to R) Director S.S. Rajamouli and actors Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. at a promotional occasion for his or her movie RRR in Los Angeles, January 2023.
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For Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies, its world premiere at TIFF 2023 little question partly influenced its subsequent choice as India’s Oscar entry final yr. These are all incremental positive factors, pushing Indian cinema in direction of a seat at the Big Table, the Academy Awards.
In 2024, 11 movies have been chosen at TIFF from India, South Asia and Diaspora, and in 2023, 14 have been chosen. This yr’s 17 movies and collection chosen embrace eight movies and collection from India, 4 South Asian movies past India, and 5 Diaspora movies. This is an incredible feat, as every has been picked from over 8,000 submissions worldwide.
I really like going to TIFF, not only for its excellent movie choice, but in addition as a result of it’s a really public-facing folks’s pageant. And once I was on the purple carpet in 2023, crowds of followers screamed “Ki-ran, Ki-ran”. They mistook me for the Laapataa Ladies filmmaker, and I apologised, “So sorry, I’m not Kiran, but you should see her brilliant film Laapataa Ladies/ Lost Ladies,” and all of us had a superb snicker.
Kiran Rao (second from left) with the solid of her 2023 movie ‘Laapataa Ladies’.
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Cinema with out borders
“I’m over the moon,” says Bollywood actor Huma Qureshi, whose movie Bayaan, directed by Bikas Ranjan Mishra, has its world premiere in TIFF’s Discovery part. In an author-backed heroine’s position and not using a ‘hero’, Qureshi performs a policewoman in an investigation drama about abuse inside a cult. “For any actor, TIFF is a dream because it’s such a global platform, where cinema is celebrated without borders,” she says. “It’s also a validation of the choices I’ve made — stories that are a little risky, that push the envelope. My expectation is about conversations, seeing how audiences across the world respond to our film, how it travels beyond India.”
Huma Qureshi in a nonetheless from ‘Bayaan’.
The different Indian movies at TIFF 2025 embrace Anurag Kashyap’s Monkey in a Cage (Bandar), starring Bobby Deol, in a task that could be a redemption of kinds of his latest testosterone-driven outings in Animal (2023) and Kanguva (2024). Kashyap commends Deol for being “emotionally naked” together with his character in Bandar, a jail drama with a distinct tackle the MeToo motion.
“I never gave him [Bobby Deol] a script. I would give him the scene just before we would shoot it. He has never done that before. I told him, you’re not playing a hero, you are a character, one of many. It’s just that the film is about you, so the focus is on you, but you’re not playing a human being superior to anyone. And you’re supposed to be emotionally naked. He took to the process like a fish to water.”Anurag KashyapDirector of ‘Monkey in a Cage’ (‘Bandar’)
He says, “I never gave him [Deol] a script. I would give him the scene just before we would shoot it. He has never done that before. I told him, you’re not playing a hero, you are a character, one of many. It’s just that the film is about you, so the focus is on you, but you’re not playing a human being superior to anyone. And you’re supposed to be emotionally naked. He took to the process like a fish to water.”
Deol leads an ensemble solid with Sanya Malhotra, Saba Azad, Sapna Pabbi and a bunch of indie abilities from regional language cinema (Riddhi Sen, Natesh Hegde, Indrajith Sukumaran, et al). Apart from being a hat-tip to the rising home attraction of Indian cinema, the casting may assist to amplify the movie’s attraction.
Sanya Malhotra in ‘Bandar’.
On a quieter observe, theatre artist and filmmaker Jitank Singh Gurjar can even be at TIFF this yr, together with his deeply transferring second characteristic, In Search of the Sky (Vimukt), a couple of lower-income household with a mentally challenged grownup son and their journey to the Mahakumbh Mela in hopes of a miracle remedy.
“Just being at TIFF will be a big moment,” says Gurjar, who shot his movie in Prayagraj at the landmark pilgrimage gathering that’s estimated to have seen 660 million folks earlier this yr.
A nonetheless from Jitank Singh Gurjar’s ‘In Search of the Sky’ (‘Vimukt’).
“Shooting at the Mahakumbh with a small crew was the biggest challenge, with the chaos, the scale, and carrying equipment through the crowds. But, at the same time, it was also the most satisfying part, because it gave the film an authenticity that cannot be recreated anywhere else,” he provides.
The subsequent large Indian movie
This yr, for the first time, India additionally has a collection at TIFF. Gandhi, co-created by Hansal Mehta and Sameer Nair and produced by Applause Entertainment, is a lavish interval collection shot on a number of continents with a global solid and crew. “Being the first Indian show, one that is truly swadeshi, and to be on this global stage is, for me, already a vindication of the ambition, effort, and passion poured into its making. In a career spanning more than 30 years, this is perhaps the most ambitious and the most challenging story I’ve ever told,” says Mehta. The drama tells the story of Mahatma Gandhi’s early years and is predicated on historian Ramachandra Guha’s books Gandhi Before India and Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World.
Pratik Gandhi in a nonetheless from Hansal Mehta’s ‘Gandhi’.
Clearly Gandhi’s producer Sameer Nair has a outstanding urge for food for taking calculated dangers as nicely. The big-budget collection, starring Pratik Gandhi and Bhamini Oza, was made with out having a streaming platform on board initially. “The rise of streamers in the past 10 years emboldened us to tell this great story in the premium drama series format across multiple seasons. We are following our business model of creating the material and then licensing it, so to that extent, it remains within the framework of what we usually do,” says Nair.
Director Hansal Mehta
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The bold sentiment is echoed by Bayaan producer Shiladitya Bora. “I see selection at TIFF as part of a larger vision of pushing Indian cinema into the global mainstream in a way that films from South Korea, for instance, have managed to do,” says Bora, founding father of Platoon One Films. “We’ve had great moments in the past with films like Lunchbox, RRR, and more recently, All We Imagine As Light, but we are still waiting for that one film that will become a global phenomenon, like Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. Can Bayaan be that film for India? It is a story with a global appeal, and TIFF is the perfect launchpad to start its journey around the world.”
(L to R) Actors Kani Kusruti, Chhaya Kadam, director Payal Kapadia and actor Divya Prabha pose with the Grand Prix Award for his or her movie ‘All We Imagine As Light’ at the Cannes Film Festival 2024.
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Journey to the Oscars
From South Asia past India, there’s British-Pakistani filmmaker Seemab Gul’s Ghost School in Discovery, Bangladeshi director Adnan al Rajeev’s Ali, which obtained a Special Mention in Cannes’ Shorts Competition; and Pakistani director Sana Zahra Jafri’s Permanent Guest.
Director Aneil Karia and actor Riz Ahmed signify their movie ‘Hamlet’ at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2025.
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One of TIFF’s centrepieces might be Hamlet, British actor-rapper of Pakistani descent Riz Ahmed’s reimagining of Shakespeare that has been “13 years in the making…,” wrote Ahmed on Instagram. The movie was launched at Cannes in 2022, when Ahmed and director Aneil Karia informed leisure portal Deadline, “Our Hamlet is an outsider in a wealthy British Indian family, who starts to question his relatives’ morality and his own sanity after encountering his father’s ghost.” Also premiering at TIFF after a lot delay is Indian-origin American standup comic-actor Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut Good Fortune, starring Keanu Reeves as angel Gabriel, and Sandra Oh.
Aziz Ansari and Keanu Reeves in ‘Good Fortune’.
TIFF is one in every of the Big Five international movie festivals that additionally comprise Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Sundance. Premieres at TIFF are essential as a result of they lead as much as the awards season. Unlike the different A-lister festivals, TIFF, like Berlin, is amongst the most accessible. Its industrial, well-liked cinema attracts in the crowds who’re then launched to impartial arthouse and New Wave movies which might be an important a part of the pageant’s combine. TIFF is a gateway to North America as the U.S. theatrical launch/screening is a key step in the journey to the Academy Awards.
While Cannes premieres are the first indicator of Oscar probables, over the a long time, TIFF openings have additionally secured Oscar nominations and wins. Notable TIFF-to-Oscar success tales embrace Chariots of Fire (1981), which launched this predictive custom, adopted by Life Is Beautiful (1998), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), La La Land (2016) and American Fiction (2023).
The India join
A nonetheless from Rima Das’s ‘Village Rockstars’.
Rima Das’s Village Rockstars (2017), Lijo Jose Pellisery’s Jallikattu (2019) and Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies (2024), all TIFF world premieres, have been despatched as India’s official entry for the Academy Awards. TIFF not solely found Das and turned her into a worldwide identify, it made Indians sit up and take observe and provides Das the National Award in 2018. Das has since been a pageant alumna, usually premiering her movies at TIFF and Berlin. Back in 2007, Mr. India director Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age premiered at TIFF and went on to get Cate Blanchett a Best Actress nomination and received Alexandra Byrne the Best Costume Award at the 2008 Oscars.
Filmmaker Rima Das
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Filmmaker Shonali Bose — whose Margarita with a Straw (2014, co-directed, written and produced with longtime collaborator Nilesh Maniyar) received the NETPAC Jury Award at TIFF — attests to the leverage supplied by the Canadian pageant. “I consider myself a TIFF baby and feel very lucky that all my fiction films have been selected there, the last one being The Sky is Pink[2019], the only Asian film in the Gala section. Here’s a funny story: Cameron Bailey [CEO, TIFF] first saw my debut, Amu [2005], in Berlin at its world premiere. After my Q&A, he came up to me and offered TIFF. I said no at first, since it meant I couldn’t screen anywhere else till September. Other filmmakers said, ‘Are you crazy?’ So, I chased him down to say yes. Cameron has been a huge supporter and friend since.”
(L to R) Shonali Bose, Kalki Koechlin and Nilesh Maniyar at the London premiere of their movie ‘Margarita With a Straw’ in 2014.
TIFF premieres often assist with discovering distributors/ gross sales brokers globally and assist in theatrical releases again dwelling, particularly for smaller productions corresponding to Nithin Lukose’s Malayalam debut Paka (2021) or Jayant Digambar Somalkar’s Marathi indie Sthal (2023), as an example. But there have been exceptions corresponding to Ritwik Pareek’s Rajasthani satire Dug Dug (2021) which stays unreleased in India. “TIFF is also called the Oracle of Oscars, whatever film does really well here, it maybe, wins an award at the Oscars or a buzz gets created around it. The chances are much higher to get a nomination,” Pareek had mentioned throughout his TIFF premiere.
This yr, aside from the 17 picks, SRFTI (Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute) alumna Kunjila Mascillamani’s work-in-progress Malayalam characteristic debut Guptam (The Last of Them Plagues), co-produced by Jeo Baby, Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal, Payal Kapadia and Kani Kusruti, has been chosen as one in every of the 16 international filmmakers for the aggressive expertise growth programme, TIFF Director’s Lab.
Delhi-based up to date photographer and filmmaker Sohrab Hura, the solely different Indian to be on the prestigious Magnum Photos member collective since Raghu Rai, can even premiere his shoestring finances movie, Disappeared, at TIFF.
(With inputs from Tanushree Ghosh)
The Mumbai-based author is a movie curator/ programmer to the Toronto, Berlin and different movie festivals worldwide since 30 years. She isn’t part of the ultimate choice committee at TIFF 2025.
