Indian Cinema Takes Centre Stage At The 31st Busan International Film Festival

“The film (Lovers in the Blue Night) is also going to Busan, and that journey will probably feel more like our first Venice experience,” Anuparna Roy said when we spoke ahead of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where she won the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film. “I’m also going to Busan as a juror, which is a huge responsibility. I’m nervous and scared, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I hope it will be fun.”

Roy leads a cohort of Indian filmmakers who are screening their films at the 31st Busan International Film Festival, which will be held from October 6 to 15, at the Busan Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea. Three of these films — Leo Thaddeus’ ‘The Soul Whisper’, Vishwendra Singh’s debut feature ‘Khoriya’, and Shashank Walia’s ‘Birds in the Dark’ — will have their world premiere in the ‘A Window on Asian Cinema’ category, the festival’s non-competitive section that showcases new and notable works by filmmakers from across Asia.

Acclaimed Assamese filmmaker Rima Das (Village Rockstars, Bulbul Can Sing, and Tora’s Husband) returns to the festival with her new coming-of-age drama ‘Not a Hero’, which follows a young boy sent from the city to live in a village.

Written and directed by Leo Thaddeus, ‘The Soul Whisperer’ — starring Dileesh Pothan and Pauly Valsan — is a meditative family drama set around death, memory, and buried wounds. Theresia, a woman who offers final prayers to people on their deathbeds, is summoned to care for the powerful landlord Payyammal Varkichan and becomes an unexpected presence in his fractured family. As her sombre rituals begin to bring old wounds to the surface, a secret from her own past resurfaces, forcing the characters to confront questions of faith, grief, and redemption.

Set against the backdrop of the farmers’ uprising, Shashank Walia’s ‘Birds in the Dark’ follows a disillusioned police agent and a man wrongly accused of a crime. When the two reconnect in a caste-divided rural community, an unexpected love begins to take shape between them. Their relationship unfolds against the pressures of an unresolved past, social divisions, and a growing political movement, as they search for intimacy and new forms of solidarity in a world shaped by suspicion and upheaval.

Vishwendra Singh’s debut feature, ‘Khoriya’, previously selected for the NFDC Waves Film Bazaar Work in Progress Lab, also makes its world premiere at the BIFF. Set on the outskirts of Delhi-NCR, ‘Khoriya’ follows two Nepali half-brothers struggling to keep their failing poultry farm alive when a bird-flu outbreak wipes out their stock. As their livelihood collapses, their paths lead deeper into the city’s precarious informal economy: one clings to dreams of a better future while the other spirals into alcohol and despair. Meanwhile, a runaway migrant worker attempts to escape exploitation in the beauty and service industry. Together, their stories form a portrait of migrant lives caught between aspiration, survival and an unforgiving metropolis.

Sandeep Kumar Paul’s ‘About an Intimate Matter’, Sahil H. Shah’s ‘Birds on Ice’, Paromita Dhar’s ‘Salt Electric’, and Sailesh Rathnakumar’s ‘Selvi’ will also premiere at the festival.

The 31st Busan International Film Festival will be held from October 6 to 15, at the Busan Cinema Center in Busan, South Korea. Learn more here.

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