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Birds in the Dark | Hanere De Panchi


Shashank Walia | India | 2026 | 142 mins. | Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu | India Premiere | Filmmaker attending

Sun, Nov 1 | 5:20 PM | Hermann Gmeiner Hall

Poster - Birds in the Dark | Hanere De Panchi

As dawn breaks, Amir, a call centre executive, is caught in the forest by police informer Jagtar, who mistakes him for a suspect. Bound together on an arduous journey, an unexpected bond forms between them. When Jagtar realizes his mistake, they part with an unspoken promise. Jagtar returns to his village by the River Beas, where Dilraj, his childhood friend, is leading landless labourers in their struggle to reclaim the earth. When Amir arrives searching for him, Jagtar is caught between a troubled past and a possible new future. By the river, new solidarities emerge, and a reckoning awaits.

Shashank Walia

Shashank Walia

Shashank Walia studied cinematography at the Film and Television Institute of India and filmmaking at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre. His debut short fiction, In the Month of Love, which he wrote and directed, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and screened at festivals including Kyiv, St. Petersburg and Mumbai. As a cinematographer, his recent credit includes Gurvinder Singh’s Rehmat, which premiered at Locarno. He also co-directed the short documentary Somewhere Nowhere for PSBT. Birds in the Dark is his debut feature.

Producer: Reema Kaur, Hansal Mehta, Sahil Saigal
Writer: Shashank Walia
Cinematographer: Shashank Walia
Editor: Reema Kaur
Sound: Shashank Kothari
Music: Nipun Bhatnagar
Cast: Mauli Singh, Sapną Dąs, Harwinder Aujla, Shahnawaz Bhat

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