Movies
Yoodlee Films’ ‘Agra’ wins Best Film at Prestigious NYIFF Awards
Mumbai: Globally acclaimed and celebrated film, ‘Agra’ has won two major awards at the New York Indian Film Festival Awards. The film won the award for Best Film, and actor Mohit Agarwal was awarded Best Actor Male for the film amidst eminent nominations. After receiving high praise across film festivals such as Cannes, Jio MAMI, Busan, and IFF Melbourne, Agra continues to put India on the global map by winning at the most celebrated NYIFF Awards. ‘Agra’ was one of the most awarded Indian films at NYIFF, with director Kanu Behl and actors Mohit Agarwal and Priyanka Bose nominated in principal categories.
Alongwith the nominees, the film features a stellar cast led by Rahul Roy in a remarkable comeback, Ruhani Sharma, Vibha Chibber, Sonal Jha, and Aanchal Goswami. Directed by the renowned filmmaker Kanu Behl, the narrative delves into the complexities of love, desire, and familial bonds against the backdrop of a dysfunctional household in small-town India.
Kanu Behl shared his excitement, “Cinema is truly a universal language, and it is overwhelming that something so personal to me is being recognized on a global stage. It is an honour to win such a prestigious award and a proud moment to represent India at this festival. The love and appreciation from audiences and critics globally have been exhilarating.”
Saregama India Ltd. senior VP Siddharth Anand Kumar said, “Agra is a daring journey into the human psyche. For audiences across the globe to not just relate, but to celebrate the film, is a great honour for us. Representation at NYIFF is a proud moment, but winning Best Film and Best Actor is phenomenal. We are proud to continue this global journey for ‘Agra’.”
Mohit Agarwal expressed his joy in winning the prestigious award, “I am ecstatic to receive the Best Actor award at the NYIFF film festival. It’s a recognition for our hard work and toil and to represent India on such a prestigious platform feels surreal!”
The film is written by Kanu Behl and Atika Chohan.
Hollywood
Utopai Studios partners Huace to deploy PAI for long form content
Deal includes revenue sharing as Huace adopts AI engine across global ops
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… algorithm, the script just got a silicon co-writer. In a move that signals how storytelling itself is being re-engineered, U.S.-based Utopai Studios has partnered China’s Huace Film & TV Co. Ltd. to bring artificial general intelligence into the heart of long-form content creation.
At the centre of the deal is PAI, Utopai’s cinematic storytelling system, which Huace will deploy as a core engine across its production pipeline from development and creative iteration to global localisation. The partnership includes a large-scale annual usage commitment from Huace, alongside a usage-based revenue-sharing model, underscoring both ambition and commercial confidence on both sides.
For Huace, one of China’s largest film and television companies, the bet is not on automation alone but on scale with control. With distribution spanning over 200 countries and a presence across more than 20 international platforms, including Netflix and YouTube, the company brings a vast content ecosystem where even marginal efficiency gains can translate into significant output shifts. Its extensive TV IP library further positions it as fertile ground for AI-assisted storytelling workflows.
The choice of PAI follows what Huace described as a rigorous evaluation of existing AI tools, many of which remain limited to fragmented use cases such as video generation or editing. What tipped the scales, according to the company, was PAI’s ability to handle long-form narrative complexity maintaining continuity, structure, and creative coherence across entire story arcs rather than isolated clips.
Utopai, for its part, is using the partnership to anchor its international expansion strategy, pitching PAI as an enterprise-ready system built for customisation, privacy, and regulatory adaptability across markets. That positioning becomes particularly relevant as global media companies increasingly scrutinise how AI integrates into proprietary workflows.
The timing is notable. Earlier this month, Utopai upgraded PAI to support three-minute 4K video generation and advanced multi-shot sequencing features designed to tackle one of AI storytelling’s biggest hurdles: consistency across scenes.
What emerges is not just another tech collaboration, but a glimpse into how the grammar of filmmaking could evolve. Because if stories were once crafted frame by frame, the next chapter might just be coded scene by scene.
