Hindi
Taiwanese film wins Golden Peacock at 40th IFFI
NEW DELHI: The Golden Peacock for the best film went to the Taiwanese film I can’t Live without you by Leon Dai, while Ounie Leconte won the best director award (Silver Peacock) for the film A Brand New Life, a South Korea-France co-production at the 40th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) that concluded at Kala Academy here last night.
The Special Jury award went to the Georgia-Kazakhstan film The Other Bank by George Ovashvili.
Apart from the Governor of Goa, Dr S S Sidhu, Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Dr S Jagathrakshakan, and Goa Assembly Speaker Pratapsingh Rane were among those who were present.
The glitter and shine of the show was lent by the Chief Guest of the evening, renowned star Mammootty, along with Bollywood stars Jackie Shroff and Rati Agnihotri, apart from International Jury member Sarika.
Others present at the programme, presented by actor Rohit Roy and former Miss India Sayali Bhagat, included V B Pyarelal, Joint Secretary (Films) in the I & B Ministry and Entertainment Society of Goa Chief Executive Officer Manoj Srivastava. The award-winners were also present.
While the Golden Peacock for the best film was presented by Dr Sidhu, the Silver Peacock for best director was given away by Mammootty and the Silver Peacock for best director by Dr Jagathrakshakan. As each award was announced, members of the jury read out the Citations.
The Golden Peacock also comprised a cash award of Rs two million each for the producer and director, and the Silver Peacock awardees received Rs 1.5 million each.
Dr Sidhu suggested the state government should think in terms of building a film city. He said the increasing participation in the film festival was evidence of the attempt to make this festival of the standard of those in Cannes, Toronto or Berlin.
Cinema, he said, is the ultimate product of artistic creation and self-expression. It was a vibrant medium which had led to job creation for millions. But he stressed the need to encourage filmmakers by creating a conducive environment to enhance the national image. He said there was a scope for an image makeover in the mainstream cinema to show the kind of resurgence that had been seen in regional cinema.
Dr Jagathrakshakan said the film industry is responsible for shaping the thoughts of the common man, and therefore there is greater responsibility on this medium. Indian cinema had begun to reach new heights, and the Oscar to maestro A R Rahman for the film ‘The Slumdog Millionaire’ was an ample example of this.
Cinema was also an important economic driver and the industry was expected to grow from the present Rs 85,000 million to 175,000 million by 2011, thus registering a compounded annual growth rate of 11 per cent. He said the central government will create the right policy environment for the growth of the film industry.
He said that a meeting of the organizing committee of the IFFI would be held soon to review the 40th IFFI and wanted suggestions on how this festival can be improved further.
Thespian Mammooty, who has acted in more than 300 films in the last 28 years in different languages, said India did not need to compete with Hollywood. Indian cinema was successful because it talked in the language of human emotions, and he felt honours received within the country were higher than Oscars or international awards, though he clarified that he was not belittling those awards.
The competition section had films from Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, China/UK, Georgia/Kazakhstan, Iran, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, South Korea/France, Sri Lanka and Taiwan and two from India.
The jury was headed by the noted Director from Brazil Joao Batista de Andrade. Other members of the jury were Kenichi Okubu (Japan), Jean-Michel Frodon (France), Sarika (India) and Vic Sarin (Canada).
Films from Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Poland and France were screened under Country Focus section while Latin America was the Continent in Focus. The films of Gurinder Chadha, Manoel de Oliviera and Nonjee Nimibutr were screened in Retrospectives Section.
The 11-day extravaganza, which began on 23 November with the screening of He Ping’s Wheat, witnessed screening of 300 films from 47 countries. In the international section, a total of 145 films were shown in 18 categories. These included 54 in Cinema of the World, 15 in the Competition, five in the Focus on Latin America, and 23 in the Country Focus categories.
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.
