Hansal Mehta’s Punjabi Film Set For Busan World Premiere
Birds in the Dark, a Punjabi-language feature backed by filmmaker Hansal Mehta, is headed to South Korea for its world premiere in the Vision section of the 31st Busan International Film Festival, which runs from October 6 to 15, 2026.
Titled Hanere De Panchi in Punjabi, the film is a one-man labour of love behind the camera: Shashank Walia wrote it, directed it and served as its cinematographer. Set in rural Punjab and shot in striking black-and-white, the narrative weaves together Punjabi along with Kashmiri and Urdu dialects as it moves through intersecting lives shaped by gender, caste and class.
A film born from community
The production pairs Reema Kaur of Two Black Squares with Mehta and Sahil Saigal of True Story Films as producers. Kaur also edited the picture, giving the project an unusually tight creative core.
Walia described the film as something that emerges from people and returns to them, born from a desire to understand one another through mutual aid, care and solidarity. Such acts, he said, reveal what connects people, what is worth fighting for and what ultimately sustains love.
Kaur called the journey deeply humbling, recalling how living alongside the community and listening to their stories uncovered the power of the collective. The goal, she explained, was to capture the quiet, mundane rhythms of everyday existence and the resilience living within them.
Mehta returns to a familiar stage
The selection carries personal weight for Hansal Mehta. His earlier films Aligarh and Omerta both screened at Busan during his directing years, and he now arrives as a producer for the first time. He hailed Walia’s work as an exquisitely meditative painting on gender, labour, justice and love. Saigal added that True Story Films deliberately backs distinct, director-driven voices alongside its mainstream slate, and believes this film belongs on a stage like Busan.
Founded in 1996 as Korea’s first film festival, Busan has grown into one of Asia’s most significant launchpads for new cinema and a bridge between Asian filmmaking and global audiences, making its Vision section a natural home for bold personal storytelling.
The October premiere will place rural Punjab in front of an international jury of festivalgoers and buyers. A warm reception could open distribution doors both in India and overseas for this small film with large ideas.
Featured image courtesy: Bollywood Hungama
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