Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar, the Hindi action thriller released last December, will open the Indian Panorama at the 57th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, which runs 20–28 November. Leena Yadav’s Ladakhi-language Becoming opens the non-feature programme. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting published the selection, 25 features and 20 non-features, through its Press Information Bureau on Saturday 14 November.
Key facts
- Indian Panorama 2026: 25 features (20 in the main section, five in Mainstream Cinema) chosen from 404 entries; 20 non-features from 358
- Opening films: Dhurandhar (Hindi), Aditya Dhar; Becoming (Ladakhi), Leena Yadav
- Juries: features chaired by Madhur Bhandarkar (12 members); non-features by Himanshu Sekhar Khatua (six members)
- Five first features nominated for the ₹5 lakh ($5,300) best debut director award
- FilmBunch count: the published lists name 50 films in 14 languages, against the 76 films in 18 languages the ministry has announced for its Indian programme; four of the five web-series nominees are still unnamed
How the selection was made
The Panorama is IFFI’s annual survey of Indian production, introduced in 1978. Two juries chose this year’s films. The 12-member feature jury, chaired by the director and producer Madhur Bhandarkar, picked 20 titles for the main section and five for Mainstream Cinema. That strand draws on the year’s commercial releases: under the festival’s regulations, industry bodies such as the Film Federation of India and the Film and Television Producers Guild of India put films forward on popular appeal and box-office receipts, and the jury picks up to five. The same jury nominated five first features for the best debut director of an Indian feature film award, which carries ₹5 lakh ($5,300); the five form their own sub-section and are not counted among the 25. The six-member non-feature jury, led by the director and teacher Himanshu Sekhar Khatua, chose the 20 non-features.
The regulations cap the feature section at 26 films and the non-feature section at 21, each including the best film of the 73rd National Film Awards in its category, so this year’s selection stops one short of both limits. Films had to be completed, or certified by the Central Board of Film Certification, between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2026.
The full Indian Panorama 2026 selection
Titles, languages and directors as given by the Press Information Bureau.
Feature films (20) – Paro – The Untold Story of Bride Slavery (Hindi), Gajendra Ahire – Laalo – Krishna Sada Sahaayate (Gujarati), Ankit Bhupatbhai Sakhiya – The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond (Hindi), Kamakhya Narayan Singh – Krishnavataram (Hindi), Hardik Gajjar – Birds on Ice (Ladakhi), Sahil Shah – Scroll (Tamil), Kannan S – Pagla Ghora (Bengali), Sekhar Das – Aadi Anant (Marathi), Mahesh Limaye (also known as Shivkumar Limaye) – Urum (Nyishi), Duyu Tabyo – Banaras (Hindi), Bharatbala Ganapathy – Kabir Sir Ka Akhri Lesson (Hindi), Sarfaraz – Sing Geetham (Telugu), Singeetham Srinivasa Rao – Ohh My Dog (Hindi), Amit Rai – Ruby-Cube (Kannada), P Sheshadri – Sev Micchar (Hindi), Muskan Asthana – Pili Channe (Tulu), Anupama Sharadhi – The Great Grand Superhero Aliens Ka Aagman (Hindi), Manish Saini – Thaai Kizhavi (Tamil), Sivakumar Murugesan – Surjyamukhi (Assamese), Antara G.G. Choudhury – Sarvam Maya (Malayalam), Akhil Sathyan
Mainstream Cinema (5) – Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1 (Kannada), Rishab Shetty – Baapya (Marathi), Samir Tewari – Mana Shankara Vara Prasad Garu (Pandaga Ki Vastunnaru) (Telugu), Anil Ravipudi – Dhurandhar (Hindi), Aditya Dhar – Deool Band 2 (Marathi), Pravin Vitthal Tarde
Best debut director of an Indian feature film, nominees (5) – Chennai Love Story (Telugu), Ravi Varma Namburi – Pratyabartan (Bengali), Samarpan Sengupta – Tighi (Marathi), Jeejivisha Kale – Sledge (Kashmiri), Raja Shabir Mohd Khan – Hanuman Ansh (Hindi), Vishal Chaturvedi
Non-feature films (20) – The Unseen Holy River – Saraswati (Hindi), Bhasker Vishwanathan – Becoming (Ladakhi), Leena Yadav – Shat-Shat Atal (Hindi), Atul Pandey – The Hug of Emptiness (Kannada), Pradeep Kumar Shetty K – Red Carpet (Assamese), Aimee Baruah – Demography Is Destiny (Hindi), Kamakhya Narayan Singh and Anshuman Shekhar – Echoes of the Last Shelter (Hindi), Bharat Arora and Rajesh Bhatia – Win (Telugu), Praveen – Ulididdu Sampige Maatra (Kannada), Abhishek – Nirmanjali: The Chandigarh of Maciej Nowicki (English), Suraj Kumar – Shiksha (Marathi), Amyth Patkar – Naqsh-e-Daur (Kashmiri), Baba Tassaduq Hussain – Chandoba (Marathi), Nipun Dharmadhikari – Abhal-Vriksh (Marathi), Santosh Davakhar – Attappadi (Tamil), Vijeesh Mani – Save the God (Hindi), Niraj Kumar Mishra – Amit Atal (Hindi), Hitesh Shankar – Switch Off (Malayalam), Sandeep Francis – Chalo Indian with Eric Ji – Mizoram (English), Rajdeep Choudhury – Kathar Katha (Bengali), Dhritisree Sarkar
Best web series (OTT), nominees (5) – Made in India – A Titan Story, Robbie Grewal (Prime Video, MX Player), nomination announced by its producers – Four further nominees not yet published
Commercial hits beside regional cinema
Mainstream Cinema is where the year’s box office meets the state showcase. Beside Dhurandhar, which Dhar followed in March with Dhurandhar: The Revenge, it holds Rishab Shetty’s Kannada prequel Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1, two Marathi films and Mana Shankara Vara Prasad Garu, the Chiranjeevi comedy that Anil Ravipudi released for the Sankranti holiday in January.
The main section leans the other way. FilmBunch counted the languages the ministry gives for each title: the 25 features span 12, with Hindi on nine, Marathi on three and Tamil, Telugu and Kannada on two each, while Gujarati, Ladakhi, Bengali, Nyishi, Tulu, Assamese and Malayalam have one apiece. Every one of those 12 is already present in the main section of 20; the Mainstream picks add none. Among the non-features, Hindi again leads with six of the 20, ahead of Marathi with three and Kannada and English with two each. The debut nominees and non-features add Kashmiri and English, bringing the published lists to 14 languages.
Five of the selected films also compete for IFFI’s international prizes. Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1, The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond and Paro – The Untold Story of Bride Slavery are the three Indian titles in the 15-film international competition, Variety reported on 13 November; the festival’s competition page still lists only the 12 international entries. Birds on Ice, one of the 20 main-section features, and the debut nominee Sledge are the two Indian films in the seven-title competition for first features, according to the ministry’s curtain-raiser, which calls the latter The Sledge. Kamakhya Narayan Singh, who directed The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond, has a second film in the selection: he co-directed the non-feature Demography Is Destiny with Anshuman Shekhar.
What is still missing
The ministry’s curtain-raiser of 13 November promised 76 Indian films in 18 languages; the lists published so far account for 50 films in 14, and the ministry has not said what makes up the difference. The web-series award is also incomplete: the Panorama release’s headline announces five nominees, but the release itself names none. One has surfaced through its makers: Made in India – A Titan Story, the Prime Video and MX Player series about the creation of the Tata Group’s Titan watch brand, directed by Robbie Grewal and produced by Prabhleen Sandhu, whose nomination Bollywood Hungama reported on 14 November with statements from Sandhu and Grewal. The award, introduced in 2023, carries ₹10 lakh ($10,600), shared equally between the series’ directors or creators and its producers, and drew 46 eligible entries this year.
The regulations also provide for New Horizons, a strand of Panorama films having their world, international, Asian or Indian premiere at IFFI, plus up to five films the festival curates outside the Panorama. Neither release says which films it includes.
Our earlier report has every international title IFFI has named so far, led by the opening film, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland. For Ravipudi’s next project, see our report on his comedy with Jr NTR; for how Dhurandhar: The Revenge set the bar for Indian films abroad, see our report on Ramayana topping the UK chart.
Our reading
The Panorama is a state selection, and its value lies less in the Goa screenings than in what follows: the regulations send the chosen films on to festivals in India and abroad, to Indian film weeks run under cultural-exchange agreements and to dedicated Panorama festivals. For a franchise hit such as Dhurandhar that circuit is a footnote. For a Tulu or Nyishi feature with a small home market and no sales agent, it may be the only international calling card the film gets.
The overlap with the competitions points the same way. With three Indian features in the main competition and two more among the seven first features, the festival is placing its own national selection directly against Volker Schlöndorff’s Visitation and the rest of the international field. The juries’ verdicts on 28 November will show whether that platform turns into prizes. Before then, the festival still has to name four of its five web-series nominees and say which films make up New Horizons.
Sources
- Press Information Bureau (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting), Indian Panorama to showcase 25 feature films and 20 non-feature films at 57th IFFI, 14 November 2026 (release ID 2336235)
- Press Information Bureau, IFFI 2026 curtain-raiser, 13 November 2026 (release ID 2335780)
- Press Information Bureau, entries invited for the 57th IFFI (Indian Panorama, debut director award ₹5 lakh)
- IFFI, Indian Panorama rules and regulations 2026 (sections, caps, eligibility window)
- IFFI, Best Web Series (OTT) Award rules and regulations (₹10 lakh, up to five nominations)
- IFFI, Best Debut Feature Film of a Director 2026 (international debut competition)
- Variety, Dhurandhar and Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1 among Indian Panorama line-up at IFFI Goa, 15 November 2026
- Variety, Kantara: A Legend, The Kerala Story 2 and Visitation among 15 films in IFFI international competition, 13 November 2026
- Bollywood Hungama, Made in India – A Titan Story nominated for best web series at IFFI 2026, 14 November 2026
- European Central Bank, euro reference rates, 13 November 2026 (USD 1.1052, INR 104.1575 per euro; ₹94.24 per $)