Berlinale Talents 2026: Meet the Indian filmmakers using discomfort as creative power

Last year, autarkic movie editor-turned-director Tanushree Das felt rewarded when, aft watching her directorial debut, Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox), astatine Berlinale, radical turned emotional. Some were reminded of their puerility successful East Berlin, portion others recalled their mothers’ invisible labour. A worker spoke astir however psychologically stifling it was not to beryllium capable to talk to their household astir each they person done. Baksho Bondi is astir the quiescent resilience of a middle-class pistillate successful Barrackpore, moving the household and dealing with a hubby who’s a erstwhile worker with post-traumatic accent upset (PTSD).

Das co-directed theiridescent Bengali film, starring Tillotama Shome, on with her cinematographer-partner Saumyananda Sahi (All That Breathes, Eeb Allay Ooo!, Nasir, Trial by Fire, and Black Warrant). Sahi was portion of the Berlinale Talent Campus successful 2005 astatine 17, making him the youngest Indian endowment to beryllium selected for the programme. Das, arsenic an editor, was selected successful the past but could ne'er spend to marque the European trip. This year, she is 1 of six Indians among the 200 selected from 3,500 applicants globally. Berlinale Talents volition instrumentality spot from February 13 to 18 astatine a caller address: Radialsystem. “When your movie is successful 1 of the apical 5 festivals, others bash instrumentality notice. They look astatine it differently,” says Das, for whom this volition beryllium a “first-of-its-kind summit”, barring India’s NFDC Film Bazaar arsenic an exertion with work-in-progress (WIP) projects similar Eeb Allay Ooo! and Aise Hee.

Building a movie community

Berlinale Talents has much than 10,000 alumni worldwide, 1 of the world’s largest and astir connected movie networks. This year, the Talents Lab volition big 20 alumni projects spanning fiction, documentary, animation, and experimental forms, creating a collaborative abstraction to refine originative visions and accelerate production. The Talent Project Market volition besides spotlight alumni, presenting 10 projects seeking accumulation partners wrong the Berlinale Co-Production Market, which is for projects with a minimum fund of €1 million. “When Berlinale has invited maine back, they are bringing maine into their community. So, adjacent time, I tin transportation astatine the alumni forums. It’s a thriving abstraction wherever engagement is happening astatine galore angles,” Das says.

Speaking of gathering a community, composer-turned-producer Naren Chandavarkar’s Moonweave Films (Baksho Bondi; 2025 Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize Dramatic victor Sabar Bonda [Cactus Pears]) is co-producing Nihaarika Negi’s Feral.

Feral is successful this year’s European Film Market (EFM) and the Berlin Co-Production Market. Multidisciplinary artist, theatre histrion and experimental filmmaker Negi wrote Pushan Kripalani’s movie The Threshold (2015), starring Neena Gupta and Rajit Kapoor. Her Feral is an Indian genre movie with beardown planetary potential. Set successful 1950s India, the movie is astir 2 part-tribal maidservants, and it is an elevated fearfulness doused with achromatic humour astir assemblage trauma. Negi hopes to find imaginable sales/distribution partners astatine the market. Negi was a Berlinale Talent successful 2021. “The camaraderie that we shared and the progressive networks we proceed to person are special,” she says.

Yet different returnee is Subarna Dash, 31, the lone Indian filmmaking Talent who is not from Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. The Kolkata-based Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI) postgraduate is an animation filmmaker whose enactment explores themes of the body, identity, and isolation, often with a interaction of wit and humour. Her graduation film, The Girl Who Lived successful the Loo, premiered astatine Berlinale 2024. “I’m excited to instrumentality to Berlinale Talents with my debut mixed-media feature, In Heat, On Loop. I’m truly looking guardant to publication mentorship, processing the task further, and connecting with chap Talents, hopefully starring to aboriginal collaborations,” she says.

Mumbai-based Anadi Athaley, 38, movie exertion and shaper for 11 years (Borderlands, The Unreserved, Sabar Bonda, Ralang Road, Holy Curse, Daaravtha), is looking guardant to the masterclasses, discussions, and “sessions focused connected editing, and to knowing the challenges my peers are navigating successful an progressively unstable world.”

In Berlin, Delhi’s Kislay, 37, who’s presently penning his adjacent screenplay, A Death Foretold, expects “to sermon the originative and organization challenges facing autarkic cinema. To introspect astir the satellite today, saturated with visuals, wide media, and violence.”

“And however tin cinema basal up arsenic a captious mean reflecting connected the existent times. With the coming of societal media, world itself has turned into narratives, with almighty institutions competing with each different to propagate their mentation of reality,” helium says.

The Delhi University and FTII postgraduate Kislay was, on with Prateek Vats (Eeb Allay Ooo!) and Cannes Grand Prix-winning Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine As Light), booked successful the complaint expanse for protesting against the assignment of BJP subordinate and TV histrion Gajendra Chauhan arsenic the FTII president successful 2015.

“As a society, we truly request to interest that the constituent of captious engagement with civilization has gone missing,” helium says. Kislay adds further that galore young filmmakers are making their debut films precise rapidly these days, contempt “a deficiency of organisation strategy and a dedicated assemblage which engages with autarkic cinema. It’s a chickenhearted and ovum problem, deficiency of infrastructure for the art, which is not commercially driven, ends up not creating the assemblage which mightiness privation to prosecute with specified art.”

Thematic shift

The Talents taxable for this twelvemonth is “Creating (and) Confusion — Cinema, Chaos and the Power of Discomfort”. “It is simply a subtle acknowledgement that cinema can’t beryllium over-planned, that pathbreaking cinema was ne'er designed arsenic such, and that chaos is embraced wholeheartedly arsenic a indispensable information of creation. The Steve Jobs clip doing the rounds astir pre-vis and storyboarding applies lone to animated films and large films,” quips indie shaper Thanikachalam S.A., of Barycenter Films, which co-produced Maisam Ali’s In Retreat (Cannes) and Nishant Kalidindi’s Theatre (IFFR Rotterdam).

Dash says, “My existent project/film follows the travel of a quality who’s stuck, confused, and lost, learning to beryllium with unfamiliarity and discomfort alternatively than rushing towards resolution.” Athaley’s enactment often engages with disorder and sometimes deliberately sits wrong it. These confusions scope from idiosyncratic spaces specified arsenic “identity, sexuality, and morality to larger geopolitical uncertainties that signifier our contiguous moment. I judge that asking hard questions and allowing ourselves to beryllium with discomfort is often the lone mode to determination forward, and cinema is simply a almighty mean to bash that,” helium says.

Not giving up

For Athaley, this was his seventh application, and 5th for Devraj Bhowmik. For Thanikachalam, it’s taken 21 years to scope here. “I was selected to enactment successful the India variation of the Berlinale Talents successful 2005, organised successful concern with the Osian Cinefan Film Festival successful Delhi. I thought I’d astir apt marque it to the main 1 successful Berlin adjacent year.” One chap subordinate was Rahi Anil Barwe, who’s present a Bollywood writer (Tumbbad). “The Berlinale Talents has grown exponentially successful these 21 years,” says Thanikachalam, “The size of the films I person produced is cleanable for the Talent Project Market.”

Kanpur-bred Bhowmik, who wanted to go a large Bollywood composer — worked on Aashram and Bhediya — present lives successful Ireland, trying to find his footing successful the Irish movie industry. “FTII laid the instauration for my curiosity astir dependable successful cinema,” says Bhowmik, who’s besides collaborated with indie filmmakers, including Arya Rothe, the Indian exertion connected Kristina Mikhailova’s River Dreams (in Forum Special section), which was the archetypal Kazakh documentary movie ever to premiere successful the past of Berlinale.

Bhowmik hopes the programme volition springiness him visibility and a accidental to collaborate connected meaningful projects. “More importantly, I privation to usage this level to amplify my dependable arsenic a dependable designer. Sound has immense, untapped power. It tin signifier stories successful the astir beauteous ways if it’s included close from the scripting stage. Let’s commencement by calling ourselves dependable directors,” helium says.

About the “loudness” of mainstream Indian cinema astatine present, Bhowmik says, “this loudness reflects our surroundings, however radical present freely explicit radical, intolerant opinions. But not everything large is impactful.” Athaley adds, “The Indian movie manufacture arsenic a full is going done a hard phase, and autarkic cinema tends to consciousness its interaction astir sharply.”

Also successful this year’s line-up is simply a young programmer-curator Vedant.

tanushree.ghosh@thehindu.co.in