31st Busan International Film Fest| From Tamil Selvi to Rima Das’ Not A Hero, Indian Films Shine And How!

India is making a major splash at the 31st Busan International Film Festival (October 6–15) with a massive footprint spanning screenings, industry markets, and jury seats. Nine Indian features play out across the Vision – Asia and A Window on Asian Cinema lineups, while Paromita Dhar’s short Salt Electric vies for honors in the Wide Angle competition. Beyond the screen, four Indian co-productions are pitched at the Asian Project Market, with directors Rima Das, Anuparna Roy, and Rintu Thomas serving on key festival juries. At the Asian Project Market in Busan, A Chronicle Of Minor Things, from Shape of Momo director Tribeny Rai, picked up two major prizes, the APM Busan Award and the Sorfond Award.

Rima Das' Not a Hero is a coming-of-age feature that observes childhood freedom through a 12-year-old’s perspective. Uprooted from the city and dropped into his family's rural village, the boy builds ties with an unfamiliar aunt, connects with a horse, and runs wild with village youths. Away from electronic screens, his rural journey uncovers simple pleasures and instills a newfound sense of being.

Not A Hero makes its India premiere at the Dharamshala Film Festival 2026.

Emerging from the NFDC Waves Film Bazaar WIP Lab to its world premiere at BIFF, Khoriya—the debut feature by Vishwendra Singh—delves into the harsh realities of Delhi-NCR’s migrant population. The plot hinges on two half-brothers from Nepal, struggling to save their poultry enterprise, wiped out by a bird-flu crisis and forcing them into the informal labor market where their responses diverge into hope versus self-destruction. Intertwined with a migrant worker’s escape from service-industry abuse, the film spins a poignant story about human ambition clashing with systemic hardship.

Set in rural Punjab, Birds In The Dark is shot in black-and-white and backed by Reema Kaur for Two Black Squares, and by Hansal Mehta and Sahil Saigal for True Story Films. In a statement to THR India, director Shashank Walia shared, “Birds in the Dark emerges from the people and returns to them. This film was born from a desire to understand one another through mutual aid, care, and solidarity. It is in these acts that we discover what connects us, what is worth fighting for, and, ultimately, what sustains us; love."

Walia has written, shot and directed the contemplative drama.

Selected in Vision Asia is Sailesh Rathnakumar’s debut feature Selvi starring Anjali Patil. As per a synopsis in Variety, the Tamil film circles Selvi, a homecare nurse who takes on her best friend Kavitha’s shifts in addition to her own after Kavitha’s sudden collapse. Moving from one house to another caring for the elderly, rarely stopping to rest, Selvi begins to confront the weight of guilt, love and survival as long hours blur the boundaries between care and exhaustion.

Directed and penned by Leo Thaddeus, the contemplative family drama The Soul Whisperer features Dileesh Pothan and Pauly Valsan in a story built around grief, recollection, and long-concealed trauma. The plot follows Theresia, a woman known for performing last rites, who enters the household of influential landlord Payyammal Varkichan to tend to his final hours. Her arrival and solemn ceremonies unsettle the estranged family, exposing buried conflicts while triggering revelations about her own aching history that compel everyone to grapple with faith, loss, and absolution.

Titled Chevittorma in Malayalam, the film is chosen for A Window on Asian Cinema.

Seeking a fresh start, a schoolteacher Swarna moves to a quiet suburb with her partner Driti, only for a student to leak her intimate photos across school. As her authority shatters under hostile stares and hypocritical administrators, Swarna's career and relationship hit a breaking point, forcing a desperate battle for her autonomy. Debutant filmmaker Sandeep Kumar Paul’s About an Intimate Matter is also in A Window on Asian Cinema section.

Paromita Dhar’s short film Salt Electric premiered in the festival's Wide Angle: Asian Short Film Competition. It follows 18-year-old Kim as she moves towards adulthood in a Catholic household, navigating changing relationships with her body, family and the adult world around her.

Anuparna Roy heads to Busan with her sophomore feature. Dialogue in Hindi, Sylheti, and Marathi weaves together the lives of four migrants chasing connection amidst Mumbai’s urban isolation. From a closeted married man and his bar-working wife to a sex worker and a local criminal, their intersecting journeys unravel the human cost of survival. Roy won the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival for this film.

Set for its global premiere at BIFF 31, Birds on Ice captures the cultural heartbeat of Ladakh through the eyes of a young girl named Tashi. Living with her grandfather in continuous anticipation of her pastoralist parents returning home, Tashi copes with the solitude by chasing a bold personal dream on the frozen rinks of ice hockey.