Дебютный фильм о нелегальных мигрантах из Непала пройдет мировую премьеру на кинофестивале в Пусане

Vishwendra Singh’s ‘Khoriya’, an exploration of Nepali migrant workers, travels to Busan film fest The film previously featured at the NFDC Waves Film Bazaar 2025 Work in Progress Lab Filmmaker Vishwendra Singh’s debut feature ‘Khoriya’ will have its world premiere at the 31st Busan International Film Festival. The 81-minute film, shot in Nepali and Hindi, is produced by Niharika Singh, Faraz Khan and Prayas Deepti, with acclaimed filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia serving as executive producer. It will participate in ‘A Window on Asian Cinema’ section. Set in the outskirts of Delhi-NCR, ‘Khoriya’ follows two Nepali half-brothers whose precarious lives are further destabilised when a sudden bird flu outbreak threatens their failing poultry farm. As one pursues a parlour worker attempting to escape her home and the other spirals into alcohol and despair, their struggle for dignity takes them into the city’s darker underbelly. The film explores the lives of Nepali migrant workers navigating an urban ecosystem in which they are indispensable to the city’s functioning, yet largely invisible within its social fabric. ‘Khoriya’ previously featured at the NFDC Waves Film Bazaar 2025 Work in Progress Lab, where it won the Post-Production Grant. For the first-time director, the film grew out of a documentary project he began in 2019, when he spent time observing migrant communities from Nepal and Northeast India living and working around Delhi. The experience became the foundation for a fictional narrative exploring migration, masculinity, aspiration, labour and the universal need for belonging. Vishwendra says: “‘Khoriya’ began with my interest in people who have been deprived of a sense of home — people who leave everything behind and arrive in an unfamiliar city in search of a more dignified life.” “I wanted to stay close to their silences, contradictions, loneliness and tenderness, and to the struggle to hold on to dignity in a world that can make people feel disposable. The film also draws from my own upbringing in an army household and my proximity to the aspirations surrounding military recruitment. To have my first feature premiere at Busan is deeply overwhelming. Busan has played such an important role in discovering and supporting Asian filmmakers, and I cannot think of a more meaningful place for ‘Khoriya’ to begin its journey.” The film also examines the longstanding aspiration among Nepali workers toward recruitment in the Indian Army, a subject with particular resonance for Singh, who grew up in an army household. The film marks another independent feature from Future East, the production company founded by Ashim Ahluwalia, whose films have premiered at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto, Sundance and other major international festivals. Ahluwalia, who has worked with Singh for nearly a decade, sees ‘Khoriya’ as part of a new generation of independent Indian cinema emerging outside conventional production structures. “I’ve known Vishwendra for many years, and ‘Khoriya’ feels like the emergence of a very distinct filmmaking voice.” “What interested me was the way the film enters a world that is rarely represented on screen without turning its characters into an issue or an argument. There is an intimacy and contradiction to these lives that Vishwendra captures very instinctively. For Future East, the film also represents our continued commitment to backing filmmakers who don’t necessarily fit existing categories. We’re very proud that his first feature will premiere at Busan.” Niharika Singh, producer and partner at Future East, says, “‘Khoriya’ is precisely the kind of film we want to champion at Future East — singular, deeply rooted in a specific world and made by a filmmaker with a distinctive point of view. Vishwendra approaches the lives of Nepali migrant workers with tremendous intimacy, without reducing them to victims or symbols. The film is specific to a community and a place, but its questions around dignity, aspiration and belonging are universal. We are thrilled that Busan will introduce Vishwendra’s voice and these characters to an international audience.” Anuparna Roy’s ‘Lovers in the Blue Night’ and Sahil H Shah’s ‘Birds on Ice’ are also part of the section, besides ‘About an Intimate Matter’ by Sandeep Kumar Paul and ‘Not a Hero’ by Rima Das.