Two Indian films, Dorothy and Termite, are at TIFF this year, and the directors and producers sat down to talk about their approaches to storytelling. That's basically all the hard info we've got right now, and I'm going to be careful not to make up more than that, because I got called out for exactly this once already and grandma raised me better.

what I can tell you is that both teams described their approaches as unique, as in, deliberately not the usual playbook. Which is interesting on its own! Indian cinema at festivals tends to get slotted into one very specific lane and everything outside it fights for scraps of attention. I've written before about how the streaming algorithms bury great South and regional content, and festivals can do the same thing, just with more prestige. So when two movies openly chart their own path? good. more of that please.

I haven't seen either one yet, so this is not a review, this is me being interested. There's a difference. I got burned earlier this summer hyping something in my head into something it couldn't be, so I'm calibrated now. I don't know what Dorothy actually looks like or how Termite paces itself, and I'm not going to pretend I do. The honest version of this article is: two Indian films got festival attention for doing their own thing, the filmmakers are talking about it, and I want to know more.

The question is the same one every year. Whether these get proper distribution outside the festival bubble, or whether they end up as trivia answers. That's just depressing when it happens, and it happens a lot.

If you're at TIFF and catch either one, report back. seriously. This is exactly the kind of stuff I want to track as it lands.