Hindi
DIAF pays tribute to Bimal Roy
NEW DELHI: The Delhi International Arts Festival (DIAF) recently organised a film festival on a rare gem of Indian cinema, Bimal Roy.
The tribute to the filmmaker was organised by the DIAF in collaboration with the Directorate of Film Festivals and the National Film Archives, India to commemorate his birth centenary with the screening of five Hindi films.
Roy’s son Joy and daughter Aparajita Sinha said that their father had lived for his cinema and gave full attention to the medium and would continue to live in the hearts of the people as long as people kept coming to see his films.
Rattnotama Sengupta, daughter of the late filmmaker and writer Nabendu Ghosh who had written most of Roy’s films said that the films of Roy came out of real-life characters and out of literature. Director of Film Festivals, S M Khan and Arshiya Sethi of DIAF also paid their tributes on the occasion.
Films screened in the Bimal Roy tribute section were Bandini, Parakh, Sujata, Do Bigha Zameen and Madhumati. The films were varied for their range. If Bandini was about the moral dilemma of a condemned woman and her struggle for social legitimacy, Parakh was about greed and lust for money. Sujata dealt with the divides created by casteism while Do Bigha Zameen told the story of a zamindar‘s hold on the rural poor. Madhumati was a commercial film with lighter moments tinged with some hints of re-incarnation.
It would not be wrong to describe Bimal Roy as a filmmaker who crossed national and international boundaries through his cinema. Noted for his realistic and socialistic films, Roy made around forty features and documentaries from 1944 till his death on 7 January, 1966 in Mumbai.
After a long stint in Kolkata, Roy launched Bimal Roy Productions in 1952-53 with Do Bigha Zameen that made a strong universal impact for its humane portrayal of Indian peasantry.
Do Bigha Zameen has the additional distinction of being one of the first Indian films to win awards and accolades in China, UK, Karlovy Vary, Cannes, the then Soviet Union, Venice and Melbourne.
It is considered one of the ten best Indian films of all time.
Hindi
Jio Studios unveils AI-powered Krishna teaser at NAB Show 2026
Global first look of Krishna uses Galleri5 AI pipeline on Azure, Historyverse slate as Jio’s Dhurandhar crosses Rs 3,000cr worldwide.
MUMBAI: Krishna has just dropped a divine teaser and this time the gods are powered by silicon, not just scripture. Jio Studios and Collective Studios’ Historyverse stole the spotlight at the NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas with the world’s first teaser for their upcoming theatrical feature Krishna, directed by Manu Anand. The big reveal happened during Microsoft’s keynote “Powering Intelligent Media, From AI Experimentation to Real-World Impact,” where the film’s AI-native production pipeline took centre stage alongside Collective Artists Network’s in-house platform, Galleri5.
At the heart of this mythological spectacle lies a fresh cinematic workflow built by Galleri5 on Microsoft Azure’s advanced AI and cloud infrastructure. Forget bolting AI onto traditional VFX or animation, this is an end-to-end, production-grade system woven into every layer: world-building, character creation, shot design and final output. Yet the storytelling remains firmly director-led, emphasising emotional depth, stillness, music and performance rather than pure spectacle. The result? Large-format theatrical cinema rooted in Indian history and culture, but conceived in ways that were simply not possible before.
Collective Artists Network runs Galleri5 natively on Azure, leveraging Microsoft Foundry and cutting-edge AI tools to handle film, episodic and advertising workflows in a secure enterprise environment. Microsoft highlighted Collective as a “Frontier” organisation successfully moving AI from pilot projects to real production-scale deployment in cinema. The technology is also on display at Microsoft’s NAB booth in the West Hall (Booth W1731).
Jio Studios (Media & Content Business, Reliance Industries), president Jyoti Deshpande said the project advances the studio’s mission to take Indian stories global with scale, ambition and authenticity, “With Krishna, we are embracing cutting-edge AI-led filmmaking while democratising these tools to make them more accessible, intuitive and cost-effective for storytellers everywhere.”
Collective Artists Network founder & group CEO Vijay Subramaniam added, “We’re using technology developed in India to carry our culture and history to audiences worldwide at a scale never seen before.”
Microsoft, vice president for telco media & entertainment, gaming Silvia Candiani noted that the media industry has reached an inflection point, “AI is no longer about experimentation but delivering real impact at production scale… By building AI-native creative systems on Microsoft Azure, Collective exemplifies how storytellers can unlock new formats, move faster and realise a true return on intelligence while keeping human creativity at the centre.”
Krishna forms part of Historyverse, Collective Studios’ ambitious slate of history and culture-driven IPs. The slate draws from iconic figures and traditions that shaped the Indian subcontinent, including stories inspired by Kali, Karna and Durga. It builds on the already-released Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh series, showing how ancient narratives can be reimagined for modern screens.
Jio Studios, India’s leading content studio and the media and content arm of Reliance Industries, continues its blockbuster run. The studio’s Dhurandhar franchise led by Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar: The Revenge has become the first Indian film series to cross Rs 3,000 crore worldwide. It also delivered three consecutive years of India’s highest-grossing Hindi films: Stree 2 (2024), Dhurandhar (2025) and Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026). In just eight years, Jio Studios has assembled a library of over 160 films and series, with more than 60 titles winning over 500 awards. Other notable successes include Laapataa Ladies (India’s official Oscar entry 2025), Stree, Article 370, Shaitaan and Mrs.
The NAB unveiling marks another step in Jio Studios and Collective’s push to blend Indian storytelling talent with frontier technology proving that the future of cinema may well be both ancient in spirit and thoroughly modern in execution. For audiences who love epic tales with a fresh twist, Krishna promises to deliver divine drama, this time with a little help from the cloud.
