FTII Has Just Released A Rare Collection Of 90s Student Films Featuring Irrfan Khan

There’s something special about student films. They exist outside the polished machinery of mainstream cinema where money, marketability, and star power often shape a film’s final form. They are windows into the minds of young filmmakers who are still discovering their voice; capturing the world around them with unvarnished honesty. They take risks, experiment with form, and tell stories that might never find a home in the more commercial corners of the industry. In many ways, these films are the purest reflections of a nation’s creative undercurrents.

It’s in this space that 'Irrfan Unveiled', a collection of six remastered student films from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), becomes an invaluable document of both a moment in Indian cinema and the early brilliance of an actor who would go on to redefine storytelling on screen. These films, now available on FTII’s YouTube channel, offer a rare glimpse into the kind of stories young filmmakers wanted to tell in the early 90s and how a young Irrfan Khan, before he was a household name, shaped and adapted to these worlds.

Each of these films is a striking narrative experiment, grappling with themes of power, class, isolation, and human psychology. 'A Briefcase Full of Reflexive Maladies' (1992) is a meditation on money and its quiet, insidious grip on human relationships. The film follows characters who rarely interact, yet remain tethered by their attitudes towards wealth and ambition. Even without conventional dialogue, the film speaks volumes about how capitalism shapes our choices and distances us from each other. 'You Can’t Give Any Reason' (1992) takes a stark, almost theatrical look at class struggle. It follows a powerless family trapped in the machinations of a middle-aged officer who dictates their fate. The film paints a bleak picture of systemic oppression, showing how powerlessness strips people of agency, reducing their reactions to mere rituals of survival.

Then there’s 'Veg. Non-Veg' (1992), a crime drama with a dark, ironic edge. A gangster, tasked with kidnapping a girl, finds himself falling in love with his target. But in a world where violence is currency, love is a liability. The film questions whether human connection can ever truly exist in an ecosystem built on brutality. 'Manoeuvre' (1992) plunges into psychological horror, crafting a chilling, silent thriller about obsession and buried trauma. A chance encounter triggers a man’s memories of childhood violence, leading him down a path of eerie fixation and murder. The final act; a game of Scrabble between the protagonist and the woman who has become both his object of desire and destruction, is hauntingly poetic, leaving us unsettled yet unable to look away.

'Reconnaissance' (1990) shifts the lens inward, following a melancholic young man who exists in a dreamlike state of self-criticism and unfulfilled longing. He struggles to communicate his feelings, trapped between ideals and reality, between the love he imagines and the passion he represses. It’s a film about being lost inside one’s own head — a theme that still resonates deeply in an era where loneliness often feels like an epidemic. Finally, 'Morning' (1990) adapts an Anton Chekhov story into a devastating character study. A young housemaid, exhausted by the unrelenting labor of caring for a wealthy family’s child, reaches a breaking point in an act that is both shocking and disturbingly cathartic.

Taken together, these films are not just a showcase of student creativity in the 90s, but a portrait of an era’s anxieties, conflicts, cinematic ambitions and the zeitgeist that informed them.

Irrfan was a beloved storyteller who could inhabit a character so fully that he made fiction feel like lived experience; one that his viewers could make a connection with irrespective of the story. His choices were never dictated by stardom; he sought out roles that challenged both himself and his audience. Watching these early performances, one can already see the depth he would later bring to his filmography, from 'Maqbool' to 'The Lunchbox' to 'Paan Singh Tomar' to 'Life of Pi'.

These films are more than just archival treasures: they are fragments of a restless, searching mind driven by its curiosity and passion — both of the young filmmakers who crafted them and the actor who gave them life. We may have lost him but these films are a portal to his arresting presence; a bittersweet reminder of his everlasting impact on Indian cinema, and a true gift for his fans that miss seeing him on the silver screen.

Follow FTII here and watch the collection of films here.

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