Perhaps no major street in Toronto has transformed over the past two decades as Bathurst Street. Home to working-class folks from Jewish and Black families, and thick with bookstores, galleries and quirky businesses, it possesses a rather bohemian air. Recently, quite out of the blue, a soundtrack album of the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire was found at one of its thrift shops.
Slumdog, once intended as a direct-to-video film, exploded in popularity after showings at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), grossing over USD $387 million at the box office off of a $15 million budget – one of the most profitable movies ever, taking in eight Oscars at the Academy Awards along the way. Even then, though, it was a divisive film, critiqued for turning poverty and social evils into entertainment and distorting India’s economic boom. Even the director Danny Boyle, acknowledged in 2025 that the film would not be made in the current climate.
Boyle’s reflections nearly twenty years later raise the larger questions: how has Indian filmmaking changed, and who is it for?
TIFF’s India Story
Decades ago, most arthouse film festivals would praise Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, while ignoring commercial films in India. Reflecting the growth of Toronto’s Indian population (from 6% in 1991 to 14.6% in 2021), then-TIFF programmers Noah Cowan and David Overbey, altered that course, by creating 1994’s ‘India Now!’ program, featuring Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, Dev Benegal’s English, August, Anand Patwardhan’s Father, Son and the Holy War, and films by Mani Ratnam.
Cameron Bailey (now the CEO) recognized that Shah Rukh Khan or Amitabh Bachchan could electrify crowds in the same way Matt Damon or George Clooney did. That’s how Karan Johar’s Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna premiered in Toronto, with thousands of fans thronging to greet the cast. In subsequent years, Bollywood blockbusters such as Singh Is Kinng, Dil Bole Hadippa!, and English Vinglish have appeared on screens; a recognition of their tremendous commercial opportunity, noted Meenakshi Shedde, Indian film critic and advisor to TIFF.
Notably, two audience segments easily co-existed – one for Bollywood, and one for arthouse cinema – exciting a commercial cinema fan base, while simultaneously broadening its appeal. After all, Bollywood was once a cultural language that united new immigrants, many of whom were urban professionals from Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Kerala, and other parts of India, settling primarily in Toronto and Vancouver, and sharing a common frame of reference built around Hindi cinema.
But that unifying force has weakened as the diaspora itself has grown more fractured. Canada’s South Asian population has quadrupled from 1996 to 2021, with statistics revealing that immigrants now come from 111 different countries of birth – a record high – making the diaspora far more complex and fragmented. Films have always held up a mirror to changes in society, and this was no different. As an example, Malayalam has recorded an 811% increase in twenty years, as a spoken language in Canada, with South Indian films like RRR (2022), KGF: Chapter 2 (2022), Ponniyin Selvan II (2023), Kalki 2898 AD (2024), and Pushpa 2 (2024) becoming major draws for Canadians of South Asian origin.
An Evolution
During his trips to India, Bailey observed this changing Indian film economy. Multiplexes were beginning to create room for smaller, edgier films aimed at urban audiences that sat in between commercial hits and arthouse film, and TIFF’s 2012’s ‘City to City’ program highlighted them. This was to become a landmark event for the diaspora. In the following years, The Lunchbox (2013), Angry Indian Goddesses (2015), Lion (2016), Village Rockstars (2017), and All We Imagine as Light (2024), and Homebound (2025) have all been shown, signaling a new wave of Indian cinema: more local, yet internationally connected, and difficult to categorize.
When Bollywood did appear – as it did with Priyanka Chopra Jonas in Mary Kom (2014) and The Sky Is Pink (2019), Irrfan Khan in Talvar (2015), Manmarziyaan (2018), Bhumi Pednekar’s Thank You for Coming (2023), and Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon (2024) – it was more prestige Hindi cinema than masala films.
Many of these films are backed by industry powerhouses Anurag Kashyap, Guneet Monga, and Karan Johar – all regulars at TIFF, often seen casually walking the Canadian streets – but they highlighted contemporary India which simultaneously appealed to recent immigrants, second-generation millennials and non-traditional fans.
2026: Continuing the Journey
If early Indian films highlighted auteurs, a later era incorporated Bollywood, and more recent films showcased edgier and prestige Hindi cinema, TIFF’s September 2026 slate appears to reveal the diversity of region and form.
Films such as Angh (Nagaland), Dorothy (Tamil Nadu), Half (Kerala), Phoolan (North India), and Strong Son (Canada) will be shown, many of which are world premieres. Toronto-born Richie Mehta, most famous as the creator of the Emmy-winning Delhi Crime, returns to TIFF for a third time with Phoolan, inspired by the maverick bandit queen.
Documentary filmmaker Shaunak Sen, whose 2022’s All That Breathes won top awards, appears with his Termite, with Kolkata-born Rahul Roye’s Aman, British-Indian Varun Raman’s Into the Betaverse, and Prajjwal Rajawat’s Butter Chicken to Go, about three South Asian food-delivery drivers in the winter in Canada, also in the short films section. Before becoming a full feature, Canadian filmmaker Ian Bawa’s Strong Son, began as a short as part of TIFF’s talent development initiative in 2021.
Indian films aren’t seeking permission to explain themselves anymore. Half, a Malayalam vampire revenge movie is premiering for the popular Midnight Madness crowd, accustomed to action, horror, and fantasy. Angh will compete in TIFF’s prestige program, Platform, highlighting emerging filmmakers.
TIFF is not a mirror of Indian cinema: its goal is to select films capable of crossing cultures and borders through often a neat package of cinematography, universal narratives, international financing and established stars. But it continues to diversify its palette, the same way Indian audience members are. This is, in many ways, simply demography catching up with programming: a diaspora this fragmented was never going to stay satisfied with a single national cinema speaking on its behalf. The diaspora is moving away from questions of ‘am I represented?’ to ‘which India is being shown?’
TIFF will undoubtedly look to the subcontinent for the trifecta of a Bollywood blockbuster, an established auteur such as Payal Kapadia, and a diaspora or Indo-Canadian filmmaker like Deepa Mehta. But nearly twenty years after Slumdog Millionaire, the question is no longer whether an Indian film will be in Toronto. It is which India arrives: Mumbai or Nagaland, Bollywood or Malayalam horror, a new immigrant’s India or a Canadian-born.
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