Hindi
Slovakia film industry on revival track
NEW DELHI: Although the growth of the film industry in Slovakia is hit by a financial crisis, most filmmakers feel they are happy that they are now free to make the kind of films they want without fear of censorship.
According to director Juraj Nvota, filmmakers feel there is greater freedom now as compared to the time when these countries were part of the Soviet Union. Many filmmakers are, however, nostalgic of that period when finances were assured from the State.
Nvota directed Music, a film about a young amateur musician playing his beloved music at a variety of events as a caricature of the communist regime. The film also shows how people yearn for freedom in various ways.
Hollywood is beginning to cast its influence on Slovakian films, particularly after Slovakia became a member of the European Union.
Slovakia, however, depends heavily on television for fuelling the growth of local cinema. “Unlike India, it is television which sustains cinema in my country, where a total of ten to 12 films are produced per year,” producer Katarina Vanzurova tells indiantelevision.com.
Vanzurova’s feature film Gypsy Virgin depicts the lives of the gypsies living in her country, who number 50,000 out of a total population of five million. The movie is about the almost forgotten story of a young Roma violin player whose playing cast a spell over everyone, all the way up to the court in Vienna. She became the first woman bandmaster despite being a gypsy.
Scriptwriter Lubomir Slivka, who had done the research on the film set on a folk lore of the 18th century, says a film had been made almost 35 years earlier in Czechoslovakia, but had not been a great success.
More movies are set to be produced in Slovakia. Says actress Dorota Nvotova, “The film industry in our country is on a revival mode. I expect more films to be made over the next few years.”
Agrees Slovakia counsel at the Embassy in IndiaTatiana Facikova, “While the state monopoly on film production including curbs against freedom of creativity were terminated, Slovak filmmakers lost their film laboratories and studios as a result of a murky privatisation. The creative teams dispersed which led to a huge decline in film production. But the industry has seen a revival in the past three years,” she avers.
Slovakia, which is celebrating 20 years of freedom from the communist rule, recently held its first ever film festival in Delhi. Five films were screened over three days and the festival was organised by the Directorate of Film Festivals in association with the Slovak Embassy.
The list included The City of the Sun, Blind Loves, Return of the Storks, Music and Gypsy Virgin.
The City of the Sun looks in a tragic-comic manner at the social and economic decline of the miners who under the previous regime used to be a privileged elite amongst workers.
Blind Loves uses actually blind actors to show how they spend their lives without the use of any person with sight. The film in an episodic format shows the lives of different groups of blind people.
Return of the Storks uses the story of a young flight attendant to establishing a cross-cultural dialogue in the region which seems to be unimportant though it reflects issues present all over Europe.
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.
