Oscar-Nominated All That Breathes Director Shaunak Sen's Next, Termite, To Premiere At Toronto Film Festival

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Shaunak Sen's new short, Termite, is slated to premiere at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival. 2022 belonged to Sen whose documentary, All That Breathes, captured the international festival circuit, scoring dozens of prizes and even nabbing an Academy Award nomination. The film won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Eye award for the best documentary at 2022 Cannes Film Festival. It also won a Peabody Award and was acquired by HBO. Now he's back with a fiction short, Termite. Ben Bernard, one of the DPs on All That Breathes, has shot Termite. Manas Mittal cut the film.

Termite Synopsis

The official synopsis reads, "Shaunak Sen’s follow-up to the Academy Award–nominated documentary All That Breathes is an evocative drama set in the vibrant neighbourhoods of Old Delhi, where the routined lives of two middle-aged termite exterminators are about to drastically change when one of them receives an unexpected marriage proposal."

Where Is Termite Selected?

Termite stars Faisal Malik, Shilpa Shukla, Valavane Koumarane and Vipin Sharma. Sen's "quiet, evocative" drama is selected as part of TIFF's Short Cuts programme, that includes 45 short films from 30 countries across seven curated programmes, spanning live-action narrative, documentary, animation, and hybrid filmmaking. The sidebar is filled with buzzy, star-packed titles entailing Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s animated comedy The End, starring Noomi Rapace, Denis Lavant and Alexander Skarsgard, and the Stellan Skarsgard-starrer Please, from director Anna Mantzaris.

Earlier this year, Sen was a member of the Berlin Film Festival's documentary award jury.

The Toronto Film Festival 2026 is set to run from Sept. 10 to 20.