Hindi
Recent MFF sees 70 per cent surge than last year
MUMBAI: The recently concluded Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) registered more than 3,500 delegates during its 11th edition.
The number has increased by a considerable 70 per cent compared to the delegate registration last year. With the best 200 films from all over the world screening at this year‘s MFF, the response was overwhelming from delegates, guests and press alike.
Invited guests also increased this year with the festival hosting close to 100 visitors – 50 international guests (international film directors, actors, buyers, international film festival directors etc) and 40 Indian guests (Indian film directors, actors, buyers etc) that is three times the number of visitors the festival hosted last year.
Said Mumbai Film Festival Director Srinivasan Narayanan, “The robust movie line-up, ardent support from all our trustees and the cinema lovers of Mumbai have made this festival a huge success. We are extremely pleased with the overwhelming response that the 11th Mumbai Film Festival has garnered. We have successfully raised the bar and set a benchmark.”
The Film Business Centre, in its very first year of inception, saw an overwhelming response as it facilitated business opportunities between interested parties. The India DVD rights of the most talked about international film- Antichrist was clinched by Enlighten Film Company and discussions for licensing Indian films to Greece took place in the business centre. Some visiting directors discussed production and co-production possibilities with Indian counterparts.
The UK Film Council unveiled their distribution plan for independent British films in India. Government of Meghalaya and Tourism Department of Meghalaya invited Indian and foreign filmmakers to shoot their films in the virgin locales of their State.
Lastly, the brand new initiative Mumbai Young Critics and youth-centric Dimensions Mumbai were runaway hits. The student jury interacted with the visiting filmmakers and personalities, watched the films and finally conferred the Mumbai Young Critics award on the Iranian film Whisper With The Wind.
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.
