Vishwendra Singh’s debut feature “Khoriya,” bound for the Busan International Film Festival, leads Future East Film‘s 2026-27 slate, which also includes Ashim Ahluwalia‘s “Unidentified Actress,” Rayit Hashmat Qazi’s “Sawdust” and the India-Italy co-production “Heroic Frenzies.”
Ahluwalia’s “Unidentified Actress,” an India-U.K.-Germany co-production now shooting, centers on a documentary filmmaker tracking down a movie star who vanished decades earlier, set against the tangled film world and scandals of 1950s Bombay. Qazi’s Kashmir-set “Sawdust” follows a talented young cricketer trying to break free of his circumstances, only to be pulled back by his troubled relationship with a father he struggles to tolerate. “Heroic Frenzies” is based on the real-life exploits of a 16th-century monk who defied the church, dabbled in the occult and fled across the continent before the Inquisition finally caught up with him and had him burned at the stake.
Leading the slate, “Khoriya” will have its world premiere in the A Window on Asian Cinema section of the 31st Busan International Film Festival this October. The film, shot in Nepali and Hindi, is produced by Niharika Singh, Faraz Khan and Prayas Deepti, with Ahluwalia serving as executive producer. “Khoriya” is set on Delhi NCR’s outer edge, where two Nepali half-brothers run a poultry farm that collapses after a bird flu outbreak. One brother pursues a young woman working in a parlour who is trying to break free of her home life, while the other sinks into drinking and despair as both men struggle to hold onto their dignity in the city’s rougher margins. The film examines the position of Nepali migrant workers within Delhi’s urban economy, where their labor is essential but their presence goes largely unrecognized.
