Jungle Book Studio to Sell Theja Rio's 'Angh' Internationally Ahead of TIFF Debut

Mumbai: Jungle Book Studio has picked up the international sales rights for "Angh", the debut feature from Nagaland filmmaker Theja Rio, ahead of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The company also unveiled the film's poster.

Set in the remote hills of Nagaland in the early 1960s, "Angh" centres on a Konyak chief and his son, the last members of their village yet to embrace Christianity. The arrival of an American missionary unsettles their world and compels the father and son to reckon with a way of life under threat.

The film, shot on 16mm, features a cast of indigenous actors alongside BAFTA Scotland-winning "Shetland" actor Douglas Henshall, who plays the missionary. A press note described the story as one of a father and son, capturing the tension between faith and tradition, and between modernity and memory, as a world slowly disappears.

"Angh" marks the feature debut of Rio, an alumnus of the U.K.'s National Film and Television School. His short film of the same name won a Special Jury Award at Clermont-Ferrand, while "Ade (On a Sunday)" premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and took best film honours at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.

Rio said making the film felt like a homecoming, an opportunity to reconnect with his roots and tell his community's stories through its own lens. He added that producer Nancy Nisa Beso had been part of the journey from the short film onwards, and that the characters and their world had become deeply familiar to both of them.

The film is produced by Beso and Rio through their companies Winter Hymns Films and Undercover Squirrel. Jungle Book Studio is handling world sales, with its founder Gaurav Dhingra also serving as executive producer.

Beso said the project stemmed from a desire to tell stories that are their own, describing it as a way of honouring their people, preserving ancestral stories and reclaiming their narrative for a global stage. She praised Rio's depth of vision and sensitivity.

Dhingra's producing credits span more than two decades and include the TIFF-premiering "Faith Connections", sold across more than 20 territories; the TIFF opener "Angry Indian Goddesses", released theatrically in over 67 countries and licensed worldwide by Netflix; "Beyond the Known World", the first official India-New Zealand co-production; and the Venice selection "Stolen", released globally on Prime Video.

Dhingra said "Angh" blends a global cinematic aesthetic with a deeply rooted Nagamese ethos. Noting that both the director and producer hail from Nagaland, he said the film avoids an outsider gaze and Orientalist exoticisation, anchoring its narrative in an indigenous cultural lens shaped by lived experience. He described it as an indigenous story told by indigenous filmmakers and expressed confidence that it would draw interest from international buyers.