Indian cinema got plenty of attention this year but sometimes the loudest films are not necessarily the most interesting ones. Across languages, genres and regions, there are indie films here that slipped past the noise of star vehicles, franchise releases and heavily marketed streaming titles. Some found festival audiences, some barely found an audience at all. None require homework. They are simply good films that are worth finding before the year disappears into the usual end-of-year lists.
Raj and Shobha are strangers in their 30s who have just been married through an arranged match. Their honeymoon in Goa is supposed to be the part where they finally get to know each other and for a while, it works. They explore the city, loosen up and begin to fall into something resembling a romance. Then Shobha reveals a secret from her past that could undo the marriage they have barely begun.
Pankhudiyaan unfolds over a single day and lets the relationship change in real time, without turning it into the usual glossy arranged-marriage rom-com. The 95-minute film had its Australian premiere at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne and was also nominated for Best Indie Film there.
The film opens on a funeral and then refuses every instinct a funeral drama usually reaches for. R Gowtham's debut gives you no tidy grief and no redemption arc, just a family that is alcoholic and cruel and genuinely funny in the same scene, sometimes in the same line of dialogue.
The film premiered in the Forum section of the Berlinale, but you don’t need to know anything about festival cinema to get it. If you have ever sat through a family gathering wondering how these particular people are related to you, Members of the Problematic Family may feel uncomfortably familiar.
You have probably seen them at Punjabi weddings: the women dancing under coloured lights while the orchestra plays and everyone else celebrates. Kikkran De Phull asks what happens when the music stops. Inspired by a true story, the film follows wedding orchestra dancers in rural Punjab as their ambitions collide with a world shaped by patriarchy, misogyny and economic precarity. It looks at the women behind the performance rather than treating them as part of the wedding spectacle.
The 87-minute film premiered at the New York Indian Film Festival and later received a Special Mention for Best Indie Film at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne.
Rima Das has spent a decade proving she doesn't need a crew larger than her own patience, and this is her ninth feature and her third premiere at Berlin. An eleven-year-old moves from the city to his ancestral village and is allowed to be bored on camera, which is a small choice that most directors are too nervous to make because boredom doesn't photograph the way a plot point does. The Generation Kplus youth jury gave it a Special Mention, though Das has built a career that doesn't really need the validation to prove itself.
This is a coming-of-age film that refuses to announce itself as one, which turns out to be its greatest strength. There's no swelling score at the moment of realization and no realization staged like a realization, just a boy getting slightly less confused about the world at roughly the pace that actually happens in real life. It's a quieter film than most in its genre and quieter than it needs to be given how much it has to say.
This is a small film and it seems entirely unbothered by being small. It's one of the stronger Marathi independent discoveries of the year, built around a family rather than a plot, which means there's no twist waiting to be spoiled. What you get instead is people, closely observed, for about ninety unhurried minutes, and that turns out to be enough.
A mother and son emerge from a prison release looking for somewhere that feels safe, only to discover that safety can be painfully temporary. Balan: The Boy is atmospheric, tense and quietly unsettling, with a story that unfolds through mood and observation rather than dramatic speeches or easy emotional payoffs. If Director Chidambaram’s Manjummel Boys was your gateway into Malayalam cinema, this is a very different follow-up.
Set in a dystopian 2046 Kochi, the film follows a grieving father who enters a virtual-reality memory game to reconnect with his dead daughter, for a price he doesn't fully understand until later. Krishand's cyberpunk satire sounds like it should be bleak and instead it's genuinely funny right up until the scandal underneath it stops being funny at all.
A psychological thriller that actually trusts its audience to keep up. Vikalpa builds its twists into the story rather than dropping them in for cheap shock, so paying attention genuinely pays off. It is not flashy or overloaded with gimmicks. It simply keeps tightening the tension until you realise how much the film has been making you notice.
A suspended alcoholic cop is sent to a remote village where a string of mysterious deaths is blamed on a ghost. Then the cop starts questioning his own sanity. Rakkasapuradhol turns into a psychological thriller where the investigation becomes increasingly difficult to separate from what is happening inside Shiva’s head. At just over two hours, it takes its time building the mystery, but keeps the question alive: is there really a ghost or is something far more human going on?
This is a rural romantic comedy that seems entirely uninterested in being anything other than local and that turns out to be its charm. There is no pan-Indian dub sensibility softening the jokes and no urban gloss smoothing over the setting. It simply trusts its own audience to get the joke and mostly they will.
An elderly father makes one simple request and his son slowly realises how much of his life has been built around taking his father for granted. Pallaburusu turns that familiar relationship into a quietly moving story about love, guilt and the things we promise our parents when we finally understand that time is running out. It trusts small moments, ordinary relationships and the kind of affection that doesn’t need a swelling soundtrack to announce itself. It makes its point without shouting, which makes it hit harder.
A father-in-law and daughter-in-law who already spend their days bickering now decide to run against each other in a housing-society election. That is the joke, the conflict and pretty much the entire engine of Kirtaner Por Kirtan. The sequel to Kirtan keeps things firmly in domestic-comedy territory, turning petty family grievances into an increasingly ridiculous election battle. It knows exactly how much story it needs and wisely doesn’t try to make the joke bigger than it is.
A woman loses her livelihood and starts selling straw mats door to door. It sounds like the setup for a familiar story about female resilience, but Semmalar Annam’s debut stubbornly refuses to turn her protagonist into a symbol of suffering or strength. The film premiered in Rotterdam’s Bright Future section, where one review described its lead as a “Hercules in a saree”. It’s a memorable phrase, but Mayilaa spends its entire runtime quietly pushing back against it. This is a woman trying to get through her days, not a cinematic superhero. That distinction gives the film its power. Instead of asking you to admire her resilience from a safe distance, Annam makes you sit with the ordinary, frustrating reality of what survival actually looks like.