By Renu Mehta
Toronto
The Toronto International Film festival (TIFF) takes place this year from September 4-14, 2025. TIFF 2025 is bringing a vibrant lineup of South Asian and South Asian–related films that span genres, countries, and communities. Here are some standout titles to look out for: These films reflect a wide spectrum of South Asian and diasporic experiences—from deeply personal journeys to politically charged narratives.
HOMEBOUND
September 10 at 5:30 pm at Roy Thomson Hall
Homebound directed by Neeraj Ghaywan will celebrate its Gala Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 10. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, this immensely moving drama from director Neeraj Ghaywan follows two young friends whose bond becomes strained as they each pursue police work in a politically divided India.
Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, the heart-wrenching Homebound depicts a clash between youthful ambition and bracing political realities.
Chandan (Vishal Jethwa), a Dalit, and Shoaib (Ishaan Khatter), a Muslim, are determined to beat the odds: out of 2.5 million applicants, they each hope to win one of just 3,500 police jobs available, believing that wearing a uniform will provide them with the dignity they desire. But a year goes by without news of their exam results. Should they resign themselves to the poorly paid labour available in their village? Should they go to university? Or take a chance and move to Dubai to seek migrant jobs?
Economic pressures mount. Shoaib’s newly disabled father can no longer work the fields, while Chandan desperately wants to build his parents a house so that his mother can retire. But time, circumstance, and the ongoing humiliation they suffer due to religious and caste-based bigotry threatens to crush their hopes — and perhaps even their precious friendship.
Homebound fuses elements of Bollywood social drama with strong performances and atmospheric camera work. Jethwa and Khatter embody their characters with tremendous warmth and complexity, infusing the film with enough soul to help us weather the more enraging developments in this elegantly wrought tearjerker.
MONKEY IN A CAGE
September 6 at 9:30 pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox
Monkey in a Cage directed by Anurag Kashyap will have its World Premiere at TIFF in September this year.
Featuring an all-star cast that includes Bobby Deol, Saba Azad, and Sapna Pabbi, this scintillating legal procedural from prolific director Anurag Kashyap (Gangs of Wasseypur) takes an unflinching look at the thornier ripple effects of #MeToo in digital-age India.
Monkey in a Cage is riddled with suspense and shifting alliances and is a story of love, lies, and responsibility that takes nothing for granted. The film also asks tough questions about how we navigate the increasingly blurry frontier between our public and private lives.
Samar (Deol) is an aging television star whose celebrity is on the wane. Just as he’s settling into a comfortable relationship with the younger Khushi (Azad), his ex Gayatri (Pabbi) wants to be back in his life. Unable — and unwilling — to reason with her, Samar simply ghosts and blocks Gayatri, not realizing that his situation is about to become far more fraught. Gayatri then accuses Samar of rape. He is quickly taken into custody and subjected to a judicial system steeped in corruption and eager to keep him behind bars.
Written by Kashyap and Sudip Sharma (co-creator and showrunner of Netflix’s Kohrra), Monkey in a Cage shrewdly avoids facile demarcations of predation and victimhood. While the film examines #MeToo, it also exposes Samar as a profoundly flawed man who is out of touch with changing attitudes about gender and power.
SHOLAY
September 6 at 11:30 am at Roy Thomson Hall
September 13 at 6:30 pm at Royal Alexandra theatre
Restored in 4K in 2025, the 1975 hit Sholay directed by Ramesh Sippy will be presented at TIFF 2025.
Few classics of Indian cinema are as exhilarating as Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 hit Sholay, presented here on its 50th anniversary. One of the foremost examples of the dacoit western, the film follows two ne’er-do-wells, Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), who are recruited by an old frenemy Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar), a principled cop whose life they saved but who tried to bust them anyway. Thakur believes the duo possess the fighting skills to rid his village of the villain Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan).
Along the way, our duo find love, humiliate a tin-pot dictator of a warden, offer up a lovely tune on male camaraderie, engage in one of the greatest opening fight scenes ever, and take part in an outlandish climactic battle. And despite the fact that most of the action takes place in a poor remote village, the heroes seem able to access an unlimited supply of denim leisure suits.
Restored in 4K in 2025 by Film Heritage Foundation in collaboration with Sippy Films at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from an interpositive, two-colour reversal intermediates and a second generation interpositive from 1978 provided by Sippy Films and preserved by Film Heritage Foundation. Audio restored from the original sound negative and the magnetic soundtrack preserved by Film Heritage Foundation. This restoration of the film in 4K includes the original ending as well as two deleted scenes and with the original 70mm aspect ratio of 2.2:1.
GANDHI
September 6 at 11 am at TIFF Bell Lightbox
Gandhi, created by Hansal Mehta, Sameer Nair will have its world premiere at TIFF 2025. This sweeping, cinematic series from director Hansal Mehta depicts the formative years and legal career of civil rights icon and champion of Indian independence, Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi.
Depictions of Mahatma Gandhi have mostly been on film, notably Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning 1982 biopic. But when watching Peter Morgan’s The Crown, creators Hansal Mehta and Sameer Nair saw the potential in adapting the civil rights leader’s story into an epic small-screen series.
In season one, we meet Mohandas Gandhi (Pratik Gandhi, no relation) before he was Mahatma as a young man in India. He is already married and expecting a first child with his love Kasturba (Bhamini Oza Gandhi, married in real life to her fellow lead). Gandhi dreams of pursuing his passion for law in distant London. After some gentle persuasion by Kasturba, the wider family agrees to support Gandhi and send him on his way, expecting his law bona fides to pave the way for a life in local politics. Yet as Gandhi experiences life in London, meeting a like-minded fellow vegetarian, Josiah Oldfield (Tom Felton, the Harry Potter franchise), and growing into a deeper understanding of his own ethics, the young barrister begins to see a greater struggle ahead for him… and for India.
Based on the books Gandhi Before India and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World by Ramachandra Guha, this series brings to life the full humanity of the man who would become a global symbol of resilience. Featuring a stirring score from Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire), an impressive international cast, and detailed renderings of late 19th–century India, London, and South Africa, Gandhi spotlights a young man whose self-discovery and curiosity about the world would lead him to forever change it.
BAYAAN
September 6 at 3:55 pm at Scotiabank theatre
Bayaan directed by Bikas Ranjan Mishra and starringHuma Qureshi and Chandrachur Singh will be presented at TIFF 2025.
In a small Rajasthan town where faith is revered and silence is sacred, Bayaan unfolds as a taut, quietly devastating study of systemic complicity. When a powerful and well-respected cult leader (a quietly menacing Chandrachur Singh) is accused of sexual abuse via an anonymous letter, the case is assigned to Officer Roohi (Huma Qureshi) — a young detective from Delhi whose sense of duty quickly collides with the brutal realities of the power dynamics at play in the community.
Filmmaker Bikas Ranjan Mishra skilfully navigates the psychological terrain of corruption and resistance, depicting how Roohi’s investigation, complicated by colleagues with their own agendas, becomes less about the crime itself and more about the infrastructure built to bury it. Further hindering her task is her own father — a high-ranking figure in the police force — whose reputation looms large over the investigation. Roohi must find a witness willing to speak in order to move the case forward but the cult leader’s influence is far and wide, working to silence and isolate the very women she hopes will come forward.
Roohi’s powerful transformation from hesitant rookie to reluctant crusader is mirrored in the film’s stark visual palette and deliberate pacing. Anchored by Qureshi’s restrained, emotionally layered performance, Bayaan asks not just what it takes to speak up, but what it costs.
VIMUKT (IN SEARCH OF THE SKY)
September 7 at Scotiabank at 10 pm.
Jitank Singh Gurjar’s second feature is a resonant, indelible tale about faith, poverty, and familial obligation. The film follows an elderly couple struggling to make ends meet. The husband hauls bricks at a kiln all day while his wife supplements their income by making and selling cow dung cakes people use for fuel. She also dotingly cares for their mentally challenged adult son, Naran.
Every day tests their endurance. And now the vultures are circling. A businessman covets the family’s land. He and other villagers hint that the couple should “rid” themselves of Naran since they will never be able to care for him in their declining years. Naran’s mother is incensed, but his exhausted father can’t get the idea out of his head.
When another villager suggests they make a pilgrimage to the Maha Kumbh Mela, an enormous religious gathering that only occurs every 144 years, they take an enormous risk, hoping for a solution to their dilemma.
Gurjar’s familiarity with the film’s setting (he grew up in Gwalior in central India) and of poverty’s devastating impact, invests the film with powerful authenticity. The director is aided immensely by Shelly Sharma’s evocative cinematography and a stunning performance by Nikhil Yadav as Naran.
In Search of The Sky ends with a haunting ambiguity, leaving the fate of the family open to interpretation. Gurjar’s focus, however, is unmistakable. He turns our attention to deeply human, universally resonant themes: the crushing weight of poverty, the redemptive force of love, and the quiet resilience of personal faith.
