Notes from Dharamshala International Film Festival | And 15 inspiring Indian movies to watch

One would think Adil Hussain is a film festival essential. Cinephiles venerate the actor, who brings a rare grace to his characters, both in commercial film (Mukti Bhawan, English Vinglish, Agent Vinod, Ishqiya) and independent productions (Nirvana Inn, Lorni — The Flaneur). In an off-white denim jacket, Hussain appears relaxed at the 14th Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF), which he calls “the best in the country”. He is delivering an acting masterclass and presenting his film, Secret of a Mountain Serpent, directed by Jaipur-based Nidhi Saxena, at the festival. Last year, however, three of Hussain’s films were not selected at DIFF. “That’s why I love this festival — because there’s no nepotism,” he says.

Curated by Bina Paul, DIFF is “different”, say filmmakers. The festival, which concluded on November 2, is one where there’s “no red carpet”. Here, filmmakers renowned and undiscovered are both of equal standing. This edition had “60 young filmmakers… including Andrey A. Tarkovsky with his film on his father (Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky), A Cinema Prayer,” says Ritu Sarin, festival co-founder.

With major festivals in the country kowtowing to the glitter of the film industries, DIFF is one of those rare festivals known for its eclectic curation and primacy given to independent voices. It also engages in community outreach, by holding free screenings at local schools, colleges, and prison.

No country for independent films 

Last week, Kanu Behl’s second feature, Agra, released in theatres (on November 14) but soon exhibitors began to deny shows to the film, a psychosexual drama set in a dysfunctional family harbouring a housing dream.

Agra played in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes 2023, and has since been doing the rounds of film festivals, both international and domestic. Behl, known for his acclaimed debut Titli (2015), says he was initially promised about 100 screens and 150 shows by distributors, but it dropped to 70 shows a day ahead of release. “Out of these only 9 were PVR INOX, and the rest were mostly in faraway multiplexes that don’t see our target audience,” says Behl in an interview.

Agra showed to a houseful audience at the 2023 Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, whose 2025 edition was cancelled. If festivals are cancelled and theatres reduce or remove shows, where will the indie maker go? Yesterday, pitted against a broken system, 46 of India’s finest indie filmmakers, including Behl and Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, wrote a joint statement to demand a fundamental right: a fair screening of their films in Indian theatres.

Kanawade, whose Marathi film Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) won the top jury prize at Sundance Film Festival but ran only briefly in theatres here in September, was also at DIFF to promote his film. He says he has been “getting invite requests from different parts of the country to show his [Jim Sarbh-backed] film”. Post-DIFF, he’s headed to the US for the film’s North American theatrical release. A necessity on the road to Oscars. He says, “Independent cinema becomes independent because no one supports it.” Hussain suggests Indian schools should hold bi-annual screenings of “good independent films, for more and more young people to get educated in watching complex films, to understand human life, which is complex and contradictory”.

Not many can travel to festivals. Most Indian theatres and OTT platforms don’t see beyond big stars and profits. Distribution, more than production, is a thorn in the side of independent cinema, say filmmakers. Pan Nalin (Last Film Show/Chhello Show, India’s 2022 Oscar entry), told Variety magazine in an interview, that when budgeting independent films, his team calculates zero returns from India due to the challenging domestic market conditions for indies.

(From left, front row) Jim Sarbh, Kiran Rao, Anurupa Roy, (second row) Adil Hussain, (third row, in black) Harsh Mander, at the DIFF opening.
| Photo Credit:
Zizi Lhawang

Actor Kriti Kulhari introducing her film ‘Full Plate’ at DIFF 2025.
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

In a bid to address this, director Kiran Rao, during her talk at DIFF, announced that she’s working on an alternative distribution system. Kindling Kino, part of her production house Kindling Pictures, will likely give indie filmmakers a platform to showcase their films, own the intellectual property, and share in the profits, if any.

Here’s a list of 15 striking Indian films from DIFF 2025, across four themes, in no particular order:

Of companions and homecoming

Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound

Neeraj Ghaywan’s sophomore feature film comes 10 years after Masaan, which was his first film to go to Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard competition. Homebound, backed by Karan Johar and Martin Scorsese, received a nine-minute standing ovation at Cannes this year and is India’s official Oscar entry. It opened DIFF 2025. Friendship fuels this empathetic tale of migration and the marginalised — starring Ishaan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor — a true story inspired from journalist Basharat Peer’s The New York Times pandemic essay.

Suhel Banerjee’s CycleMahesh

This stirring film is a double bill to Homebound. In CycleMahesh, about a young migrant worker, under duress during the COVID-19 lockdown, embarks on an epic journey all the way back home on his cycle.

Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears)

Told with grace, gravitas and patience, this Marathi autofiction wrests grief from memory and the tragic from queer narratives. It gives fleshed-out rural gay characters, and childhood friends, a safe space for tender romance and a right to joy.

Tathagata Ghosh’s Aamar Comrade (My Comrade)

The greatest revolutionaries are driven by love, not hate. In this Bengali short film, a rebel’s forbidden (queer) love witnesses a tribal’s encounter in West Bengal’s Jungle Mahal.

Anurupa Roy’s Songs of Forgotten Trees

Quotidian urban loneliness meets an intimate female friendship in a lower-middle-class migrant Mumbai apartment in Venice Film Festival winner Anurupa Roy’s neo-noir Songs of Forgotten Trees, which closed DIFF. It is a spiritual cousin of Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prix winner All We Imagine as Light (2024).

Connected by water

Yashasvi Juyal’s Rains Don’t Make Us Happy Anymore

Kill and The B***ds of Bollywood actor Raghav Juyal’s younger brother Yashasvi Juyal’s short documentary is a poetic, languid and melancholic tale of forced migration told in an epistolary structure. Memories narrate the development and displacement story of an Uttarakhandi tribal village drowned by the Vyasi dam hydroproject reservoir.

Balaji Maheshwar’s Bhaavi (The Well)

Myth and folklore drive Maheshwar’s Tamil documentary. The elders of Solaganai tribal village try to restore an ancient, spiritual well to save their children from a parched future. This restoration is part of Tiruvannamalai’s Public Well Revival Movement by the Cuckoo Movement for Children.

Mothers and sons

Aakash Chhabra’s Warm Shadows/ Nighiyaan Chhavan

Co-produced by Thanikachalam S.A.’s Barycenter Films, Chhabra’s personal hybrid film turns the gaze inwards. Between mother Sheeba Chaddha and son Lakshvir Saran is a secret they must guard. In here is a desire for liberation and a walk to the sea. Familial relationships take centrestage in his films, and are juxtaposed with the nature outside. Grandson Saran tending to his grandpa (Uday Chandra) in Mintgumri/A Winter’s Elegy (2022). The cold blue of Punjab winter contrasted by the earthy umber of grandpa’s sweater.   

Prabhash Chandra’s Alaav (Hearth and Home)

Next showing at International Film Festival of Kerala in December, Alaav features a real-life parent and child. A 60-something son nurses a 90-something mother in her twilight years. His classical music training centres and rescues him. The film is the equivalent of a bonfire’s warm hug on a cold night.

A still from Prabhash Chandra’s film Alaav (Hearth and Home), that screened at DIFF 2025. (Special arrangement)

A world shaped by patriacrhy

Lakshmipriya Devi’s Boong

Produced by Farhan Akhtar, this bittersweet Manipuri gem features a Kuki-Zo boy playing the Meitei lead. Layered, innocent and funny, it is likely the last document of Manipuri society before the recent ethnic violence. Mother (Bala Hijam) and son (Gugun Kipgen) await the father’s return, until the preteen boy travels to Myanmar.

Nidhi Saxena’s Secret of a Mountain Serpent  

If walls could speak, what stories would it not tell. Women’s loneliness is a leitmotif in Saxena’s films. After her trapped-in-time-and-home mother-daughter saga Sad Letters of an Imaginary Woman, her second film Secret of a Mountain Serpent, starring Adil Hussain, uses folklore to show desires of lonely wives abandoned by their husbands.

12. Tannishtha Chatterjee’s Full Plate

Actress Tannishtha Chatterjee’s directorial debut, starring Kriti Kulhari, is a far-from-bleak, utopian take on domestic violence. A poor Muslim woman and an injured and jobless husband. The story is stale but served with fresh intent. There’s a whole lot of food, or the gendered act of cooking, nurturing and bringing up children that’s a woman’s lot.

Renuka Shahane’s Loop Line (Dhaavpatti)

Everyday misogyny, male entitlement and domestic subjugation are served cold in Shahane’s Marathi animation. It is the first Marathi animation in the Oscars’ longlist. Like mother-like daughter, writer Shanta Gokhale’s daughter Shahane is championing women’s stories in newer ways.

Vipin Radhakrishnan’s Angammal

In defiance of her son’s wish, the widowed matriarch (Geetha Kailasam) of Angammal refuses to wear a blouse, a Western/ urban imposition. The Malayalam director’s Tamil film adapts Perumal Murugan’s short story Kodithuni.

Sivaranjini’s Victoria

Unlike men, women write women more subtly. Produced by the Kerala State Film Development Corporation, Victoria sees gender, caste, class and creed play out in the women-only space of the beauty parlour. The only male here is a rooster — a weight Victoria (Meenakshi Jayan) carries — with it comes chaos.

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