Hindi
UK Film Council to bring independent British cinema to India
MUMBAI: In its drive to open up UK films to Indian markets and audiences, the UK Film Council (UKFC) will showcase a series of independent British films this February through its UK-India film distribution initiative, ‘From Blighty with Love‘.
As part of this initiative, the UKFC has partnered with Reliance Media Works, the Mumbai Film Festival, BookMyShow.com, Fame Cinemas and UK Trade and Investment to organise the festival in multiplexes across Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore from 26 February to 11 March next year.
The initiative is an offshoot of the hugely successful ‘Summer of British Films‘, by which the Council organised festivals across several locations in Britain in 2007 along with the BBC.
This will be the first time when independent specialised British films will be digitally screened for the English speaking audience in India and will feature simultaneous screening of each film on multiple screens in 2K digital across the three cities. The movies will be followed by a ‘virtual‘ in-conversations with key talent from each film via the Skype technology.
Says UK Film Council senior executive for Export Development Sarah McKenzie, “While Reliance Media Works will take care of processing of all the films into 2K, films of the festival will be shown at Big and Fame cinemas.”
‘From Blighty with Love‘, McKenzie notes, is an exciting example of the UK Film Council‘s drive to open up UK film to international markets and audiences.
“From classy literary adaptations such as Stephen Elliot‘s Easy Virtue and Julian Jarrold‘s Brideshead Revisited, to international hits such as James Marsh‘s Man On Wire and Armando Lannucci‘s satirical comedy In the Loop, we are confident that Indian audiences will be both entertained and enlightened by the diversity of British talent showcased throughout the season,” elaborates McKenzie.
The festival will also include films from renowned British filmmakers like Michael Winterbottom, Sally Potter and Danny Boyle.
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.
