Indian Panorama 2026 Picks 25 Feature Films for 57th IFFI

The home-grown half of this year's film festival line-up is now settled. On 14 November 2026 the selection for Indian Panorama 2026, the flagship Indian section of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), was announced: 25 feature films and 20 non-feature films will be screened at the 57th IFFI in Goa. The Panorama list is read every year as a shortlist of the season's best Indian work, because its stated purpose is to pick films of cinematic, thematic and aesthetic excellence and carry them to audiences at home and abroad.

What the package holds

Twenty of the feature films sit in the Indian Panorama feature section, and five more form a separate Mainstream Cinema section. The features were drawn from 404 contemporary Indian feature-film entries, and the 20 non-feature titles from 358 entries, so a place in either list was hard won. The chosen films span Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam and Assamese as well as Ladakhi, Tulu, Kashmiri and Nyishi, which makes the package one of the widest language spreads of the festival.

The opening films

The opening feature film is ‘Dhurandhar’ in Hindi, directed by Aditya Dhar. The opening non-feature film is ‘Becoming’ in Ladakhi, directed by Leena Yadav. The Mainstream Cinema five are ‘Kantara A Legend Chapter 1’ (Kannada, Rishab Shetty), ‘Baapya’ (Marathi), ‘Mana Shankara Vara Prasad Garu’ (Telugu, Anil Ravipudi), ‘Dhurandhar’ and ‘Deool Band 2’ (Marathi).

Who chose them

Separate juries picked the two forms. The feature film jury had 12 members and was headed by the National Film Award-winning director and producer Madhur Bhandarkar. The non-feature jury had six members and was headed by the director and educationist Himanshu Sekhar Khatua.

Nominations announced

Five films are in the running for the Best Debut Director of Indian Feature Film Award: ‘Chennai Love Story’ (Telugu), ‘Pratyabartan’ (Bengali), ‘Tighi’ (Marathi), ‘Sledge’ (Kashmiri) and ‘Hanuman Ansh’ (Hindi). Five web series have been nominated for the Best Web-Series (OTT) Award.

Why it matters for the exam

Indian Panorama was introduced in 1978 under the IFFI umbrella, and films it selects may travel on to foreign festivals, to Indian Film Weeks held under bilateral cultural exchange programmes and to special Panorama festivals in India. The 57th IFFI itself runs from 20 to 28 November 2026 in Goa, so the section names, the counts and the opening films are the details most likely to be asked.