“Birmingham Indian Film Festival is a festival for everybody"
The Birmingham Indian Film Festival 2026 (BIFF) will return this summer with a programme of bold premieres from India and across South Asia.
The festival, which forms part of the wider London Indian Film Festival, will take place across Birmingham and the West Midlands from July.
It will showcase films selected from some of the world’s leading international film festivals alongside emerging British Asian filmmaking talent.
Now in its 12th year, BIFF will host the majority of its screenings at the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC).
A special one-off LGBTQIA+ screening will be held at the Lockworks Cinema in Wolverhampton.
Supported by the BFI Audience Projects Fund through National Lottery funding, the festival aims to bring diverse South Asian stories to audiences across the region.
Speaking about this year’s programme, Dharmesh Rajput, head of BIFF cinema, said:
“Birmingham Indian Film Festival is a festival for everybody, and our 2026 programme is the boldest yet, spanning themes of disability, motherhood, LGBTQIA+ stories, political dramas and Indian cinema classics.
“I think the festival is about widening our horizons, understanding stories from other parts of the world, understanding cultures, understanding people.
“At the heart of it, storytelling is one of the oldest forms of helping to increase knowledge and helping people understand each other.”
Opening this year’s festival will be the European premiere of 52 Blue, a coming-of-age drama directed by Ali El Arabi. The film stars Adil Hussain and Neha Dhupia.
The screening will take place at Midlands Arts Centre on July 10, with the director and cast expected to attend.
Cary Rajinder Sawhney, CEO and programming director, said:
“We are delighted to open the festival with 52 Blue, a riveting and inspirational film about youth finding a way against impossible odds, which seems to wonderfully go against the grain of these despondent times.
“We are proud that the festival has continued to strengthen its reputation in the city and the West Midlands region and delighted that our programmers have excelled this year in bringing rare UK premieres of films that started their lives at some of the world’s major festivals.
“Our mission is to warmly serve all audiences; you don’t need to be South Asian to enjoy the film fare on offer. Everyone is welcome.”
Also screening at the Birmingham Indian Film Festival is In Search Of The Sky.
It is a powerful tale of a young man with disabilities whose poor, elderly parents in a village in India are unable to cope and take him to the Kumbh Mela (the world’s largest religious fair) in search of a cure or resolution.
Master follows a socialist schoolteacher whose electoral victory in rural Bangladesh gives way to political compromise, exposing the corrosive machinery of power and bureaucracy.
Family dramas include debut director Neel Dutt’s All About Weddings, which presents a dazzling upper-class Kolkata wedding that spirals into a chaotic showdown over the course of one day.
Meanwhile, family patriarchy is explored in Anmol – Lovingly Ours, where young parents are put to the ultimate test when their newborn’s gender identity forces them to confront their own beliefs and prejudices.
Organisers have also announced expanded accessibility measures for 2026.
These will include closed captions for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, alongside an increased number of British Sign Language-interpreted Q&A sessions across all festival locations.
The expanded accessibility programme reflects the festival’s wider mission of broadening access to South Asian cinema while creating spaces for audiences of all backgrounds to engage with stories from across the region.
The Birmingham Indian Film Festival runs from July 10-19.
