Eight South Asian Films Get a Direct Line to Financiers at Toronto's New Market
The Toronto International Film Festival is launching its first-ever film market in 2026, and eight South Asian feature projects already have a seat at the table.
A new initiative called South Asian Screen Futures has selected eight projects — six from Canada and India, plus one co-produced across Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands and Canada — and is connecting them directly with producers, financiers and international industry partners. The programme is a collaboration between the South Asian Screen Office of Canada (SASO), the festival organisation IFFSA Toronto, and Storiculture, according to Variety.
The talent attached brings festival pedigree. Payal Kapadia, whose film All We Imagine as Light premiered at Cannes, is among the names tied to the slate. So are Neeraj Churi, producer of Cactus Pears, and Subhadra Mahajan, writer-director of Second Chance.
The projects themselves span a wide emotional and geographic range. A Varnam in Silence, a Canada-India production written and directed by Kalainithan Kalaichelvan, follows a woman who loses her voice after her mother's funeral — and a family convinced it was stolen from her. Moh, from Indian writer-director Subhadra Mahajan, pairs an Indian widow with her late husband's lover on a trip that reshapes their relationship.
Soma Helang, an Indian project co-written and co-directed by Shubham Negi and Sourav Yadav, tracks a woman holding her polyandrous Himalayan family together after a hailstorm destroys the harvest. Churi produces alongside Beesham A. Seecharan.
The Canadian entries cover equally distinctive ground. Pink City Skies, directed by Maya Bastian and produced by Leslie Hope and Tina Vacalopoulos for Parallila Pictures, centres on a teenager who leaves home after being discovered with his boyfriend. A Suitable Wife for Her Husband, written and produced by Avi Grewal and Sunny Gill, follows an Afghan-Canadian salon owner secretly seeking a second wife for her husband. Lefty, from writer-producer Seth Mohan and director-producer Esther Caszo, follows a young man finding recovery from anxiety and addiction.
The broader market these projects will enter — TIFF: The Market — runs as part of the 2026 festival launch and includes a seven-day speaker summit, Screen Daily reported in December 2025. The market will also feature an innovation hub showcasing eight projects across AI, extended reality and immersive content.
For these eight South Asian features, the market represents a straightforward but critical opportunity: development-stage and production-stage projects meeting the people who can fund them and bring them to screens. IFFSA Toronto, one of the presenting organisations, has been promoting South Asian screen arts in Canada for years. The new programme at TIFF gives that mission a concrete pipeline into the global industry.
