Anurag Kashyap’s monkey, India’s flawless jail system, premiere in TIFF 2025
Director Anurag Kashyap’s new film Bandar’s premiere was at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival. The gel drama highlights India’s slow judicial process and misuse of laws, promotes discussion on reform.
Director Anurag Kashyap’s’ Bandar (in a cage in monkey) premiered in the 50th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2025. The film, which was characterized by actor Bobby Deol, premiered his world in the program of special performances, celebrating the best Canadian and global cinema.
Sharing his photo with the film’s team from Toronto on his Instagram handle, Kashp captioned, “Can’t be happy to present #Bandar @TIF_NET with my brilliant team. Thanks @Cameronpbailey @robyn_citizen and TIFF team (SIC).
Director, recently in an interview DiversityIt turned out how the film was inspired by a true story. He said, “The idea came from a true story, but we had to clearly navigate very thin lines. You don’t know who is right, who is wrong. There was misuse of new laws, there were cases of eight separate cases in eight separate police stations with the help of a lawyer and a policeman.”
The project arose when producer Nikhil Dwivedi brought the story of a newspaper to Kashyap’s attention. The uncontrolled attention of the film on India’s prison system is different from its previous work. During research before shooting the film, it was revealed that 77% of prisoners are accused of crimes and held in jail, but their cases take many years to get into the trial or never do sometimes. “There was a case of a person who came out of jail after 32 years and was declared innocent, but his case never came up for 32 years. It is a whole lifetime,” said 52 -year -old.
The film cast theater groups in various states to represent linguistic diversity found especially in Indian jails. “In a prison, people speak all kinds of languages,” the director saw.
In the inclusion of actors speaking in Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Marathi languages, Raj B. Shetty and Natash Hegde from Kannada, Indrajith Sukumaran from Malayalam, Riddhi Sen from Bengal and Ankush Gadam from Maharashtra.
The lead roles in ‘Bandar’ also include Sanya Malhotra, Saba Azad and Sapna Pabbi.
Kashyap’s upcoming action-thriller, ‘Nirchi’ is scheduled to release on September 12, 2025.