India @ Toronto – Different Strokes

By Pickle September 1, 2025

Ganga (TIFF 1985; French title: Eau) – Velu Viswanadhan – 150-minute documentary, second film in the Paris-based painter-sculptor’s pentalogy on the elements of Indian cosmology – sand, water, fire, air and ether

Forest of Bliss (TIFF 1986) – Robert Gardner – 89-minute documentary by the American ethnographic filmmaker about a day in Varanasi. The film unfolds from one dawn to the next.

The Mahabharata (TIFF 1989) – Peter Brook. Written by Jean-Claude Carriere, who worked for eight years to develop the epic for the screen

Bollywood (TIFF 1994) – Bikramjit “Blondie” Singh. A no-holds-barred parody of Bollywood potboilers and the creative ecosystem that produced them. Based on Shashi Tharoor’s novel Show Business, the film stars Chunky Pandey as Ashok Banjara as a “serious” film actor who develops the ambition to achieve commercial success and become a movie star.

Brick Lane (TIFF 2007) – Sarah Gavron. A film based on Bangladeshi-British writer Monica Ali’s book of the same name. Cast led by Tannishtha Chatterjee and Satish Kaushik.

Cooking With Stella (TIFF 2009) – directed by photojournalist Dilip Mehta. Canadian drama filmed in Delhi. Co-written by the director’s sister Deepa Mehta. About a Canadian diplomat (Lisa Ray), her husband (Don McKellar) and their cook Stella (Seema Biswas).

Chatrak (Mushrooms, 2011) – directed by Vimukthi Jayasundara. A Bengali film made by a Sri Lankan filmmaker, an alumnus of FTII Pune, with a cast of actors from Kolkata. It premiered in Cannes Directors Fortnight before heading to TIFF.

Monsoon (TIFF 2014) – Sturla Gunnarson (part of Canada’s Top Ten – Features programme). A sprawling two-hour documentary that tracks the course of the Indian monsoon.

Tigers (TIFF 2014) – Danis Tanovic. The film by the Oscar-winning Bosnian director stars Emraan Hashmi as a Pakistani medical salesman who rebels against the system when he discovers the harmful effects of the baby formula he sells on behalf of a multinational company. The cast of Tigers has several other Indian actors, including Adil Hussain and Geetanjali Thapa.

The Fall (TIFF 2006) – Tarsem Singh Dhandwar. The Jalandhar-born director shot the film in 20-odd countries. It celebrates the power of storytelling through a legend of five heroes fighting an evil governor that a hospitalised silent-era stuntman narrates to a Romanian immigrant girl recuperating in the same medical facility. Seventeen years later, Dhandwar’s film, Dear Jassi, an India-Canada-US co-production, won TIFF’s coveted Platform Prize.