Shonali Bose’ The Sky is Pink, Gettu Mohandas’s Moothon (The Elder One), Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Jallikattu and Gitanjali Rao’s Bombay Rose will be premiered at the 44th Toronto Internaitonal Film Festival beginning September 5. Toronto is the only international festival which has picked maximum number of Indian films in the official selections.

At TIFF, the Indian spotlight this year will be on well-known directors — Shonali Bose, Geetu Mohandas, Gitanjali Rao, Lijo Jose Pellissery — sprearheading the new wave of Indian cinema in the global markets.

A bold new voice in Malayalam cinema, Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Jallikattu presents a portrait of a remote village in his hometown where a buffalo escapes and causes a frenzy of ecstatic violence.

Indian writer-director Geetu Mohandas presents an unsparing yet inspiring vision of Mumbai through the story of two small-town siblings, each with their own reason for escaping to the big city, in this urgent drama pondering gender, sexuality, violence, and tolerance. Moothon is jointly produced by Anurag Kashyap.

Animated feature film Bombay Rose written, designed, and directed by Gitanjali Rao follows multiple characters, each connected by a single red rose, as they navigate life and love in the sprawling Indian metropolis. Her debut film Bombay Rose is the story of a flower seller who has to make the choice between protecting her family or allowing herself to fall in love. This touching story is set on the streets of Mumbai and moves from real life to fantasy, accompanied by much-loved Bollywood songs from the cinema halls. Painted frame by frame, for which Gitanjali is famed, Bombay Rose is a chronicle of the people who migrate from small towns, seeking minimal life in the maximum city.

The Sky is Pink is directed by Shonali Bose and is based on the story of motivatioal speaker Aisha Chaudhary who had been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis.

“What I love about India is that, it is the world’s most film passionate country in the world. You can talk to anyone in this country and everyone has got an opinion about films. This is not the case anywhere in the world. This is the cultural norm,” stated Cameron Bailiey, Co-Head of Toronto International Film Festival to Pickle during his Mumbai trip last year. Single handedly, Cameron Bailey has managed to get over 50 Indian filmmakers to showcase their work in global markets after screening their films in Toronto.

Shonali Bose’s Margarita With A Straw was selected in Toronto in 2014. The film Margarita With A Straw was a bittersweet drama about a woman with cerebral palsy. Shonali Bose has ploughed a lonely furrow as a filmmaker. Her debut feature, Amu, released in 2005, homed in on individuals affected by the 1984 anti-Sikhriots. She co-wrote Bedabrata Pain’s critically acclaimed Chittagong (2012), a dramatization of a significant chapter in India’s freedom struggle. For Margarita With A Straw, Bose cast Kalki Koechlin in a role that called for absolute commitment of time and energy. For both the director and the lead actress, the film has been unqualified artistic triumph. Her National Award winning film Amu was also screened at Toronto.

A successful Malayalam actress and director, Geetu Mohandas is best known across India for the independently funded Liar’s Dice, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. The title, which also went to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, was India’s Official Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 87th Academy Awards in 2014.

Director Lijo Jose Pellissery, whose fifth and sixth films (Angamaly Diaries, 2017 and Ee Ma Yau, 2018) have catapulted him into national prominence, is easily one of the most exciting filmmakers to have emerged in India in the course of the current decade. His films have a distinct style and pace and are underpinned by a keen sense of time and place. He is the latest discovery from India in the global film festival circuit.

Gitanjali Rao’s four independently produced animated shorts, Blue, Orange, Printed Rainbow, Chai and TrueLoveStory have been to over 150 International film festivals and received more than 30 awards.