Indian directorial debut Angh has won the top prize in the Toronto International Film Festival’s Platform section, a victory that automatically qualifies the film for the International Feature Film category at the 2027 Academy Awards.
The win marks a significant milestone for the project, which was the sole Indian film selected for the Platform strand this year. While Angh secures its Oscar berth through the festival award, India’s official submission for the category remains Gondhal, directed by Santosh Davakhar, who recently won Best Director at the International Film Festival of India in Goa.
Set in Nagaland during the 1960s, the film explores the lives of an elderly Konyak chief and his son, portrayed as two of the last practitioners of their ancestral beliefs in a rapidly changing world. The production features a cast drawn primarily from indigenous Naga communities, alongside BAFTA winner Douglas Henshall.
In his review for Variety, Siddhant Adlakha praised the film’s “disarming simplicity,” noting that it challenges conventional cinematic perspectives. “It is, in effect, a lament for things which have been lost, a quiet memorial that beats with righteous fury over how easily we let entire ways of life simply slip away,” Adlakha wrote.
The film was produced by Nancy Nisa Beso and Theja Rio. Jungle Book Studio handles international and local distribution, having acquired global sales rights prior to the Toronto premiere.
Rio described the award as a “very special moment,” emphasizing the personal significance of the project. “We made Angh with a lot of love – for the place I come from, for my people and for our culture,” Rio said. “At the heart of the film is the relationship between a father and son, but it is also about letting go, our relationship with home and the transient nature of life.”
Beso, who collaborated with Rio on the project for several years before its expansion from a short film to a feature, highlighted the importance of storytelling autonomy. “As a producer, I have carried a very deep sense of responsibility for this film… to protect the heart of what Theja wanted to say,” she said. She added that she hopes the achievement encourages other filmmakers to tell stories from their own communities and languages, even when they fall outside traditional cinematic expectations.
Executive producer Gaurav Dhingra called the win “bigger than a film,” noting his decades of experience in the industry. “I felt I was looking at something rare, a film born in Nagaland, made by Indigenous filmmakers, carrying the voice of a community rarely seen on the world’s biggest screens on its own terms,” Dhingra said.
Angh serves as the feature debut for Winter Hymns Films, a Nagaland-based production house previously known for festival short films. The project was also produced through Undercover Squirrel, a media company focusing on story-driven content across film, documentaries, and digital platforms.
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