Hindi
White Lightnin is best film at Mumbai Film Festival
MUMBAI: The curtains of the 11th edition of Mumbai Film Festival (MFF) was wrung down yesterday but not before a glittering closing ceremony heralded the closure of the seven-day Festival.
Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos received the International Lifetime Achievement award for giving the world some thought-provoking and visually appealing films.
The evening saw the honouring of Amitabh Bachchan for completing 40 years in the film industry. Thanking the MFF for the honour, Bachchan said, “I am really grateful to the Indian film industry for tolerating me for so many years. I remember all the wonderful people who got associated with me.”
Production house Navketan Films was also felicitated for completing 60 golden years in the film industry.
Later the awards were announced.
British film White Lightnin won the best film award in the ‘First Feature Films of Directors‘ category and annexed the Golden Gateway of India award. Director
Dominic Murphy pocketed the cash prize of $ 50,000. Producers, Mike Downey and Sam Taylor collected a cash prize of $ 50,000.
The Australia-Italy film La Pivellina (The Little One) was presented with the Silver Gateway of India award. The two directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel collected cash prize of $ 25,000 while a cash prize of $ 25,000 was handed over to producer Rainer Frimmel.
The Best Director award was given to Adria‘n Biniez for the film Gigante-a Uruguay-Germany-Argentina-Netherlands film. Biniez collected the Silver Gateway of India award in the ‘First Feature Films of Directors‘ category.
The Best Actress award was awarded to Paprika Steen for Applause – a Denmark film with she collecting the Silver Gateway of India award in the category.
The Best Actor went to Edward Hogg for the film White Lightnin. He collected the
the Silver Gateway of India award for in the category.
The jury award for best cinematographer and best sound recordist was given to Mark Gyori and Gyorgy Kovacf respectively for Katalin Varga – a Romania-UK-Hungary film. They collected the Silver Gateway of India award for their respective categories.
The jury headed by Paul Schrader had Irene Bignardi, Shaji N Karun, Vimukhti Jayasundara and Brillante Mendonza as its other members.
MAMI Chairman Shyam Benegal and trustees Yash Copra, Jaya Bachchan, Amit Khanna, Amol Palekar along with festival jury members graced the occasion. Also present were Anil and Tina Ambani.
Remarked Benegal, “This festival brought together some of the best cinematic talent from across the globe. We watched some very well-crafted films covering a range of thematics and issues.”
The evening was hosted by Kunal Kohli and Shefali Shah while singers Anushka Manchanda and Kunal Ganjawala performed.
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.
