Official selectionNew Currents AwardSongwon Vision Audience Award - Asia
LGBTQ+Travel/Road MovieLove/RomancePsychology/Mystery/Suspence/ThrillerComing of AgeHuman Rights/Labor/Social
A police informant Jagtar takes Amir, a Muslim man from Kashmir, into custody. As they travel through the jungle and the mountains towards the bustling city, Jagtar eventually sets Amir free and returns to the hometown he once fled. There, as agricultural workers begin to organize a struggle, Jagtar reunites with Raman, a landowner and his former lover. Meanwhile, Amir comes to the town looking for Jagtar and meets Dilraj, the leader of the workers’ organization, and begins to feel a sense of solidarity. Shashank Walia who began his career as a cinematographer, takes on both directing and cinematography for this film, portraying weighty social issues including sexuality, patriarchy, famers’ resistance, and the caste hierarchy, on the black-and-white screen with images that are poignantly beautiful at times, intense and dynamic at others. This is a compelling debut film, at once poetic and meditative, yet charged with a passionate spirit of liberation.
Shashank Walia studied cinematography at the Film and Television Institute of India and mass communication at Jamia Millia Islamia. His directorial debut short, In the Month of Love (2019), screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and other film festivals. He has since directed short documentaries while working as a cinematographer on produtions for NHK, Netflix, and others. Birds in the Dark is his feature directorial debut.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
