Beyond The Blockbuster: The Habitat Film Festival Chooses Substance Over Spectacle

There's something almost radical these days about watching a film in a theatre, surrounded by strangers, with your phone tucked away and nothing to absentmindedly doom-scroll through. The Habitat Film Festival (HFF), which returns for its 17th edition from May 16 to 25 at India Habitat Centre, is a reminder of why Indian cinema and cinephiles still need quiet, concentrated, contemplative spaces like this where cinema can serve its purpose as a reflection of the society that produced it.

At a time when mainstream Indian film industries across regions and languages are doubling down on jingoistic spectacle, high-decibel nationalism, and mythological retellings marketed as civilisational pride, the Habitat Film Festival stands apart with its thoughtful curation of regional cinema, documentaries, short films, masterclasses, workshops, and exhibitions that champion independent filmmakers and Indian parallel cinema. Celebrating 20 years of championing independent cinema, HFF 2025 offers a cinematic sanctuary that prizes complexity over high-octane dialogues, and discourse over decibels.

The Shyam Benegal retrospective — one of the many highlights of HFF 2025 — is a perfect counterpoint to the noisy homogeneity that now dominates Indian multiplexes. Benegal's oeuvre — restrained, intelligent, and deeply political — is a reminder that Indian cinema once knew how to ask difficult questions without turning them into sermons or spectacles.

The festival's retrospective programme also includes a tribute to Raj Kapoor on his birth centenary. However, this homage to the quintessential showman, too, is rendered with thoughtful complexity rather than starstruck adoration. Dastan-e-Raj Kapoor, a dastangoi performance directed by Mahmood Farooqui, re-frames Kapoor's legacy through oral storytelling.

The Raj Kapoor retrospective also includes an exhibition of archival posters, a screening of Awaara (1951), and a documentary directed by Siddharth Kak — all of which seek to unpack the layered persona behind the iconography of Raj Kapoor. Centenary tributes to icons like Mohammad Rafi, Talat Mahmood, and Tapan Sinha are similarly contemplative. In parallel, Professor S.V. Srinivas's scholarly exploration of fifty years of Rajnikanth and Chiranjeevi frames their enduring appeal not as popular spectacle alone, but as complex embodiments of Southern cinematic stardom and its evolving cultural significance.

Beyond the retrospectives, contemporary films like Payal Kapadia's Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light, Fasil Muhammed's Feminist Fathima, and Abhijit Chowdhury's Dhrubor Aschorjo Jibon at HFF 2025 offer an alternative to the dominance of franchise filmmaking and cultural policing disguised as box office logic by embracing the contradictions within contemporary society. Humans in the Loop interrogates AI and ethics, while meta-cinema like Behind the Scenes and Cinema pe Cinema turn the lens on the industry itself. HFF 2025 also features Puratawn, marking Sharmila Tagore's return to Bengali cinema, and a masterclass by Neville Tuli on cinema as a critical and interdisciplinary educational resource.

As we live through the zenith of algorithm-driven, market-led, homogenised mass movies, film festivals like the Habitat Film Festival remain essential to the present and future of cinema culture. They create space for diverse storytelling, foster critical appreciation, and connect audiences with films that challenge, inspire, and endure beyond the mainstream where cinema is seen, discussed, and re-evaluated.

Habitat Film Festival (HFF) 2025 is ongoing at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, from 16 May till 25 May.

Entry is free. Register here.

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