Vishwendra Singh’s debut feature “Khoriya,” bound for the Busan International Film Festival, leads Future East Film‘s 2026-27 slate, which also includes Ashim Ahluwalia‘s “Unidentified Actress,” Rayit Hashmat Qazi’s “Sawdust” and the India-Italy co-production “Heroic Frenzies.” Ahluwalia’s “Unidentified Actress,” an India-U.K.-Germany co-production now shooting, centers on a documentary filmmaker tracking down a movie star who vanished decades earlier, set against the tangled film world and scandals of 1950s Bombay. Qazi’s Kashmir-set “Sawdust” follows a talented young cricketer trying to break free of his circumstances, only to be pulled back by his troubled relationship with a father he struggles to tolerate. Leading the slate, “Khoriya” will have its world premiere in the A Window on Asian Cinema section of the 31st Busan International Film Festival this October.
The film, shot in Nepali and Hindi, is produced by Niharika Singh, Faraz Khan and Prayas Deepti, with Ahluwalia serving as executive producer. One brother pursues a young woman working in a parlour who is trying to break free of her home life, while the other sinks into drinking and despair as both men struggle to hold onto their dignity in the city’s rougher margins. The film examines the position of Nepali migrant workers within Delhi’s urban economy, where their labor is essential but their presence goes largely unrecognized.
The story traces back to a documentary Singh shot in the summer of 2019, following migrant workers from Nepal and India’s northeast who were living and working on Delhi’s margins. That fieldwork became the foundation for a fictional narrative built around migration, masculinity, aspiration, labor and belonging. The film had earlier been part of the NFDC Waves Film Bazaar’s 2025 Work in Progress Lab, which awarded it a post-production grant.
For Future East, the film also represents our continued commitment to backing filmmakers who don’t necessarily fit existing categories.” Niharika Singh, producer and partner at Future East, called the film emblematic of the company’s mission. His first short, “Hauah,” made in the Braj language, played the New York Indian Film Festival, the Dharamshala International Film Festival, the Jagran Film Festival and Nottingham’s Arts Mela. Future East Film, the company Ahluwalia founded, launched with “John & Jane” (2005).
The film screened in Toronto and at the Berlinale, winning an Indian National Film Award, as well as a European Media Art Award, and it also became one of the first Indian titles HBO Films picked up for domestic U.S. distribution. The company expanded into television in 2023 with Netflix’s “Cla$$,” which ranked as the streamer’s most-watched series in more than 22 countries within its opening month. We’re now turning that history and sensibility into a conscious slate.”
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