IFFLA 2026 will feature 27 films, including seven narrative features, two documentary features, and 18 short films, shining a spotlight on South Asian voices
Patriot poster
The 2026 Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) has announced the film and events lineup for its highly anticipated 24th edition. IFFLA is set to take place April 23-26, 2026. Recognized worldwide as a leading platform for South Asian cinema in the U.S., IFFLA celebrates that work, while also shining a spotlight on new voices and helping film artists take vital next steps in their careers by connecting them with key industry professionals.
The film festival’s highly impactful IFFLA Industry Days returns bigger and better than ever before – including panels, masterclasses, screenings, and pitch finalists, with details to be announced in the coming weeks.
IFLAA 2026 opens with Patriot
This year, IFFLA will feature 27 films, including seven narrative features, two documentary features, and 18 short films. Countries represented include India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the USA.
The film festival opens with Mahesh Narayanan’s Malayalam thriller Patriot, one of the most anticipated Indian films of 2026. It is led by the towering legends of Malayalam cinema—Mohanlal and Mammootty—who come together on screen again after 18 years.
With combats and chases, secret missions and covert operatives, death threats and assassination attempts, the film is an edge-of-the-seat espionage thriller. It is packed with a high voltage, star-spangled ensemble, featuring Fahadh Faasil, Nayanthara & Revathy.
IFLAA 2026 closes with The Great Shamsuddin Family
The festival will close with Anusha Rizvi’s The Great Shamsuddin Family, a razor-sharp social satire set in Delhi and her long-awaited follow-up to Peepli Live.
The witty, tightly written social satire is set over the course of a single day inside a Delhi apartment.
The film centers around Bani, played by Kritika Kamra, a writer racing to meet a crucial deadline while managing her family’s escalating turmoil. Rizvi brilliantly turns domestic chaos into a microcosm of modern India, balancing humour and heartbreak while crafting a tapestry of generational tension, urban neurosis and female resilience.
IFLAA 2026's lineup
The narrative features lineup includes impressive filmmaking debuts and award winners.
Seemab Gul’s Ghost School is a deeply poignant and acutely observed directorial feature debut from an IFFLA alum. The film tells the haunting story of a ten-year-old girl, Rabia, moving through the cracks of a broken system with a steady courage that the adults around her seem to have lost when rumour breaks out that a jinn has possessed her teacher and now haunts her school.
Mahde Hasan's spectacular debut, Sand City, is set in the unforgiving metropolis of Dhaka, where a young woman from the indigenous minority and an ambitious factory worker, two strangers harbouring repressed desires and fantasies, find themselves connected by the city’s endless and shifting sand. The film won the Proxima Grand Prix at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Tribeny Rai's Shape of Momo, which has been making waves around the world, will have its North American premiere at IFFLA. The film tells the story of a young woman who, after quitting her job in Delhi, returns to her ancestral home in a remote Himalayan village, where she must negotiate the traditional expectations that have long defined the women around her.
Also making its North American Premiere at IFFLA will be the darkly comic Lali, directed by Sarmad Khoosat, who has long been one of Pakistan’s most distinctive voices. Coming from a deeply personal space, this film tells the story of a newlywed couple caught between love and destiny and paints a quietly unsettling portrait of a family carrying wounds that refuse to heal.
Yet another impressive debut is Anuparna Roy’s Songs of Forgotten Trees, which follows two young migrant women who develop an unlikely bond as they strive to survive Mumbai's urban sprawl. The film garnered Roy the Best Director Award at the Venice Film Festival.
Karla Murthy's documentary The Gas Station Attendant is an intimate portrait of an immigrant father's journey from the streets of India to the realities of life in America, woven from archival footage and recorded phone conversations between the filmmaker and her father while he worked the nightshift as a gas station attendant. The film won Best Documentary at the Nashville Film Festival and a Special Mention at Sheffield DocFest.
Making its world premiere during a special presentation screening, Ben Rekhi and Swetlana's documentary Breaking The Code is a deeply personal story where Rekhi retraces his father's path from a modest childhood in newly independent India to his rise as a tech pioneer in Silicon Valley — a powerful story of migration, sacrifice and love that broke the glass ceiling for Indians in America.
IFLAA 2026's short film programme
The dynamic short film program, which this year features work by 13 female directors, includes the world premiere of Nihaarika Negi's sweeping Tenfa, produced by Storiculture, which previously also produced the acclaimed Humans in the Loop. Working closely with the local Kinnauri community, this intergenerational tale follows an unlikely trio of women as they cross a remote Himalayan landscape in search of an endangered herb that could save a mother's life, guided by a forgotten folk song.
Permanent Guest, directed by Joyland co-producer Sana Zahra Jafri, is a riveting psychological thriller about a young woman in Lahore who must weigh her familial duty against her growing rage when she’s paid a visit by an unwanted uncle.
Making its North American premiere, Hidden Sun, by Girls Will Be Girls director Shuchi Talati, is a stirring drama about a discontent couple whose desire for each other is reawakened when they cross paths with a flamenco dancer.
IFFLA 2026 is supported in part by the Joy of Sharing Foundation, Tarsadia Foundation, Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and additional sponsors.
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