India @ Toronto – Two Bumper Years: 1994 & 2012

By Pickle September 1, 2025

TIFF 1994 and TIFF 2012 showcased India and Mumbai respectively with large selection of films. In 1994, at the festival’s 19^th edition, programmers Noah Cowan and David Overby curated a 22-film package under the rubric “India Now!”. It consisted of 14 narrative features and eight documentaries ranging from Anand Patwardhan’s two-hour-long Father, Son and Holy War to the six-minute Tragedy of an Indian Farmer, made by Murali Nair.

The films that constituted the “India Now!” selection in 1994 were: Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen (opening night), Goutam Ghose’s Patang, Bharathan’s Thevar Magan (Tamil, written and produced by and starring Kamal Haasan), Dev Benegal’s English, August, Nabyendu Chatterjee’s Shilpi (The Dreamer, Bengali), Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Vidheyan (The Servile, Malayalam), K.P. Sasi’s Ilayum Mullum (Leaves and Thorns, Malayalam), Dilip Ghosh’s Aadhi Haqeeqat Aadha Fasana (Children of the Silver Screen), Jill Misqitta’s The Clap Trap (about Hindi cinema junior artistes), Father, Son and Holy War, Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Charachar, Tragedy of an Indian Farmer, Reena Mohan’s Kamlabai, Bikramjit “Blondie” Singh’s Bollywood (based on Shashi Tharoor’s ‘Show Business’), Riyad Vinci Wadia’s Fearless: The Hunterwali Story, Ruchir Joshi’s Tales from Planet Kolkata, Pankaj Butalia’s When Hamlet Went to Mizoram, Raja Mitra’s Ekti Jiban (Portrait of a Life, starring Satyajit Ray collaborators Soumitra Chatterjee and Madhabi Chakrabarty), Sudhir Mishra’s Dharavi, M.T. Vasudevan Nair’s Kadavu (The Ferry, Malayalam), G. Aravindan’s Marattam (Masquerade, Malayalam) and Abbas-Mustan’s Baazigar (starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol).

These films apart, the TIFF 1994 lineup had Mani Ratnam’s Thiruda Thiruda, Ismail Merchant’s directorial debut In Custody and Indian-born Canadian documentarian Ali Kazimi’s Narmada: A Valley Rises.

In 2012, the year in which the current CEO of TIFF, Cameron Bailey, was appointed the festival’s artistic director, Mumbai was under the spotlight in the short-lived City to City programme. The segment was made up of ten narrative features:

The City to City: Mumbai films were: Habib Faisal’s Ishaqzaade, Mohit Takalkar’s The Bright Day, Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur Part 1 & Part 2 (picked from Cannes Directors Fortnight), Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely (from Cannes Un certain regard section), Manjeet Singh’s Mumbai Cha Raja, Vasan Bala’s Peddlers (from Cannes Critics Week), Hansal Mehta’s Shahid, Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai and Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus.