Los Angeles, Feb 14 (.) India is making one of its most comprehensive appearances at the Berlinale in recent years, with six films screening across the festival’s- Generation, Forum, Forum Expanded, and Classics sections, Variety reports.
The National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) is also executing a strategic market approach aimed at positioning the country as a hub for the global creative economy.
The Indian slate includes Rima Das’ ‘Not a Hero’, R. Gowtham’s ‘Members of the Problematic Family’, Madhusree Dutta’s ‘Flying Tigers’, Amay Mehrishi’s ‘Abracadabra’, Utkarsh’s ‘A Circle’ as the Center of the Whole, and the 4K restoration of Arundhati Roy and Pradip Krishen’s cult classic ‘In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones’. These selections highlight the diversity of India’s contemporary independent cinema, spanning both established and emerging voices, according to Variety.
Rima Das, whose Village Rockstars was India’s official entry for the 2019 Academy Awards, returns to the Generation section with ‘Not a Hero’. The coming-of-age story follows 11-year-old Mivan as he navigates life between urban and rural settings.
“Children experience the world without filters,” Das explains. “Through Mivan, I was drawn to a way of seeing where confusion, resistance, and tenderness coexist naturally. He does not analyse his emotions, he lives them,” as quoted by Variety.
Das notes a significant shift in her working approach with child actors. “The children in Not a Hero were very different from those in Village Rockstars. In Village Rockstars, the children listened to me. In Not a Hero, I listened to them.”
She adds that the film intentionally avoids conventional narrative arcs: “Mivan does not arrive as a savior, nor does he conquer his circumstances. His journey is quieter, shaped by listening, failing, waiting, and learning to stay. The film trusts young audiences to sit with ambiguity, discomfort, and tenderness.”
In the Forum section, R. Gowtham’s Members of the Problematic Family takes a structurally experimental approach to grief and familial relationships. Gowtham describes the narrative as deliberately fragmented, reflecting his own speech patterns.
“During post-production, we found it has some structure to it. In fact, my co-producer Mukesh Subramananiam told me the structurelessness is the film’s structure,” he says. Despite references specific to Tamil pop culture, Gowtham notes the film has resonated with audiences beyond its immediate cultural context.
Madhusree Dutta’s ‘Flying Tigers’ weaves personal memory with World War II history, tracing the US military’s Himalayan logistics operation connecting Assam and Kunming. The story was inspired by her mother’s childhood in a tea plantation and her later struggles with Alzheimer’s.
“My mother’s Alzheimer’s-induced memory eventually turned into a lens through which I could see and understand the contemporary web of wars and infrastructures,” Dutta explains. She also features herself as a protagonist for the first time in her work.
The Classics section features a 4K restoration of ‘In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones’, a 1989 campus comedy written by and starring Arundhati Roy. Directed by Pradip Krishen and originally made for Doordarshan, the film, now restored by the Film Heritage Foundation in collaboration with NFDC and the National Film Archive of India, includes early roles of Shah Rukh Khan and Manoj Bajpayee.
Generation Kplus presents Amay Mehrishi’s Abracadabra, a U.K.-India co-production that explores identity and belonging through a school bus journey, while Forum Expanded includes Utkarsh’s documentary short ‘A Circle as the Center of the Whole’, a U.S.-India co-production using archaeology as a metaphor to examine Delhi’s urban landscape.
Beyond screenings, India is represented on festival juries, with Shivendra Singh Dungarpur on the main competition jury and director Shaunak Sen on the documentary award jury.
NFDC’s market initiatives at the European Film Market (EFM) include the Bharat Pavilion and WAVES Bazaar, highlighting content, technology, talent, archives, and education.
“India’s presence at Berlinale and the European Film Market reflects our larger ambition to engage with the world not only through films, but through a holistic creative economy,” says Prakash Magdum, managing director of NFDC to Variety.
The Bharat Pavilion (Feb 12–18) serves as India’s official EFM hub, facilitating B2B interactions. WAVES Bazaar includes four Indian gaming and tech startups in WAVES X, four animation companies in EFM Animation Days (Feb 12–14), and eight sponsored filmmakers participating in the international market.
Additional initiatives include Bharat Parv on Feb. 13 for industry networking and co-production dialogue, the National Film Archive of India’s participation in the EFM Archives Market (Feb 17), and engagement by leading Indian film education institutions at the Berlinale Film School Summit, reinforcing India’s positioning as a global hub for talent development, as per Variety.
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