The 51st Toronto International Film Festival closed Sunday with its Platform Prize going to Angh, the feature debut of Theja Rio. Rio is an Indigenous Naga filmmaker from Northeast India, and the prize, worth CAD $20,000, also grants the film eligibility consideration for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film under TIFF's arrangement with the Academy.
Set in rural Nagaland during the 1960s, Angh follows the last remaining Konyak Naga family in their abandoned village as the arrival of an American Christian missionary threatens the traditional culture they have preserved alone. The film stars Anghlong Konyak and Douglas Henshall, was shot on 16mm, and is performed entirely in the Konyak language. Cinematographer Adam Pietkiewicz separately received the TIFF Variety Artisan Award for his work on the film.
The Platform section, TIFF's only juried competition, featured 12 films this year, with the jury led by Argentine filmmaker Pablo Trapero. Angh is the second Indian film to claim the prize; the first was Dear Jassi by Tarsem Singh Dhandwar in 2023. In remarks following the ceremony, Rio dedicated the honor to the people of Nagaland, according to multiple outlets.
Angh began as a short film by Rio in 2021 before he expanded it into a 103-minute feature. Nagaland, a small state in India's far northeast bordering Myanmar, has rarely sent films to major international festivals. The win represents a rare crossover moment for a region and a language that international audiences have had almost no prior exposure to. The Platform Prize's Oscar eligibility provision offers an unusually direct path from a debut feature to awards consideration.
