Hindi
First Indian Ocean rim film festival kicks off on 22 Feb in New Delhi
NEW DELHI: The Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) Film Festival will be held in New Delhi starting 22 February. Inaugurating the event will be Anand Sharma, Minister of State for External Affairs, Government of India.
The nine-day event, which runs until 1 March, will screen nine films and a documentary from ten affiliated countries including Australia, Bangladesh and South Africa.
To be held at Siri Fort auditorium, this film festival is a joint effort of the Directorate of Film Festivals and the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.
“This is a part of India‘s commitment to the IOR-ARC,” said Malay Mishra, Joint Secretary (MER), Ministry of External Affairs. “We had pledged our commitment at the 7th Council of Ministers Meeting held in March 2007 in Iran. Since India is a global power in cinema, it was evident that we should start,” he added.
Speaking to the press, additional director general of the Directorate of Film Festivals Neelam Kapur said, “This is a package of ten very powerful and socially sensitive films on a variety of subjects. It will also be interesting to see how cinema has evolved in these countries, and if there is some similarity with Indian cinema as Indian cinema is popular in most of the member countries.”
Among the films will be Yolngu Boy, an Australian film which tells the story of three Aborigines that trek through Australia, and From so Far, a Mauritian documentary that tells the story of Indian immigration in Mauritius. Representing India in the festival will be Chak De! India.
“The director of the Australian film Stephen Michael Johnson is arriving tomorrow, and during the course of the festival we expect the directors from Mauritius, Bangladesh, Kenya and Bangladesh to come,” said Mishra.
“We also expect film students and people from the film fraternity to come at the screenings,” said Kapur. “The movies that will be shown at the festival will not be the same as ones screened at the IFFI. In fact, we intend to bring the Indian panorama to Delhi and Kolkata in the next few months,” she added.
Asked whether this is going to be an annual event Mishra replied, “We haven‘t thought about this on those lines. This is something that we‘ll decide in the future.”
The festival is wholly funded by the Government of India, and the passes will be available free of cost from February 19 at Siri Fort auditorium.
The IOA-ARC is a regional cooperation initiative established in Mauritius in March 1997 with the aim of promoting economic and technical cooperation and currently has 18 member countries: Australia, India, Kenya, Mauritius, Oman, Singapore, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mozambique, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Yemen, Bangladesh, Iran, Thailand and the UAE (Seychelles withdrew in 2003).
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.
