After having its World Premiere at the Directors’ Fortnight, an independent section of the Cannes Film Festival 2023 and wowing global audiences, Kanu Behl’s next Hindi feature ‘Agra’ to theatrically release across India on 14th November 2025.

An Indo-French co-production by Saregama India Ltd, UFO Production, and O28 Films, Agra is Kanu Behl’s second film to have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Special Jury Award at MAMI 2023, the IFFM Award for Best Indie Film and Best Actor at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne in 2023, and Best Film and Best Actor at the 2024 New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF).

Agra boasts of an ensemble cast headlined by Rahul Roy (Aashiqui star) who makes a comeback with this film. It also features Priyanka Bose (actor of the Oscar-nominated film Lion), a debut actor Mohit Agarwal in a lead role, South Indian Star Ruhani Sharma (Chi La Sow, HIT: The First Case), veteran actors Vibha Chibber, Sonal Jha and Aanchal Goswami in pivotal roles.

Written by Kanu Behl and Atika Chohan, Agra is an exploration of sexual dynamics within a family, and the deep dystopian fractures created in a modern India fast shrinking into pigeon-holed spaces.

The film was developed at PJLF Three Rivers Residency program in Italy, with the prestigious ‘Cinema du Monde’ film fund backing it. The film was also part of the FBR section of the Viewing Room at NFDC’s Film Bazaar, 2022.

Excited about his second feature releasing in cinemas, a decade after Titli’s theatrical release, Director Kanu Behl says, “Agra has perhaps been the toughest journey of my life so far. A film that has taken me close to a decade to get to its eventual audience – the Indian viewers. My hope is that it speaks its voice loud and clear, and starts a conversation. About our sexuality, the spaces that we inhabit and everything that lies buried around it. I have never been so excited to share a piece of my work all these years!”

Siddharth Anand Kumar – EVP of Films & Events at Saregama India Ltd. says, “Films like Agra often earn international acclaim, but not many find a release in India. At Saregama, we wanted to ensure that the Indian audience too get the opportunity to experience such powerful cinema. Agra is not an easy film — it’s raw, bold, and unflinching. Kanu holds up a mirror that compels us to confront the realities we usually choose to ignore. We’ve always believed in supporting stories that challenge convention, and we’re proud to bring this remarkable film to Indian theatres. It’s the kind of film that lingers with you long after you’ve left the cinema.”

Synopsis

Guru (25), a sexually repressed young boy, lives in a small house in Agra. He sleeps in the same room as his mother, and on the upper floor his father lives with a mistress. In an already tiny house, the only available space is the terrace on the upper floor. Guru insists that he loves Mala, an imaginary girl, and will marry her and live with her in a room on the terrace just like his father does with his mistress.

‘Agra’ then, becomes the odyssey of a young Indian man’s sexual coming of age as he goes from courting an imaginary girl; to sex chatting with an unknown girl online; to finally bedding a 40 year old cripple woman and ‘falling in love with her’, ending up having sex with for the first time. As everyone else in the house fights for the terrace to be used for their own material gains, Guru struggles with his sexuality.

DIRECTOR’S BIO/PROFILE OF KANU

After dabbling in radio, copywriting and acting, Kanu Behl studied at the Satyajit Ray Film and TV Institute, Kolkata, majoring in Film Direction. His first documentary ‘An Actor Prepares’ (2006) premiered in competition at Cinema du Reel, France. Next, he directed and produced the doc short ‘Three Blind Men’ (2007) for ZDF and ARTE, commissioned at the Berlin Film Festival. This was followed by ‘Found Him Yet?’ and ‘Over Thresholds’ (2008), documentary features commissioned by NHK, Japan. A Berlinale talent campus alumni and twice nominated for the Berlin Today Award, in 2010 Kanu dove into fiction.

His first major foray was the critically acclaimed LSD (Love, Sex & Betrayal) which he co-wrote with Dibakar Banerjee. In 2014, his debut feature ‘Titli’ premiered at Un Certain Regard, Cannes, going on to win major 8 international awards including the NETPAC and the Best First Foreign Film (2015) from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics. His follow up short ‘Binnu Ka Sapna’ premiered at Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and won the prestigious Student Jury Award.

His sophomore feature titled ‘Agra’, an Indo-French co-production with the prestigious Cinema du Monde film fund backing it, is set to premiere at Director’s Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival. And he’s in post production on his third feature titled ‘Despatch’, starring Manoj Bajpayee and produced by Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP.

An international itinerant, Kanu’s career is clearly divided into two halves – the early years grounded in a solid documentary influence, culminating in his fiction pieces which borrow from this deep love for creative documentary, both thematically and stylistically.

ABOUT SAREGAMA INDIA LTD

Saregama, the erstwhile HMV India, has been in the entertainment business for over a hundred years. It is the oldest music label in India with the biggest music repertoire across all genres and languages and is also a leading producer of fiction content for Indian TV channels.

ABOUT YOODLEE FILMS

Yoodlee Films is the studio arm of Saregama. Since its inception in 2017, it has produced over 25 feature films in various languages including Hindi, English, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi and Marathi, many of which have made their way to numerous festivals of repute, including Busan (BIFF), Rotterdam (IFFR) and Tallinn Black Nights. Closer home, Yoodlee has won three National Film Awards – two for Hamid (2019) and one for the Tamil film KD (2020).

Yoodlee films has stormed through the regional markets and is working with the biggest stars in the Malayalam, Marathi and Punjabi industries. In 2022, they released 4 big films namely, Zombivli, (Marathi) Padavettu, (Malayalam) Oye Makhna (Punjabi) and Kaapa (Malayalam). The films performed well at the box office and now are available to stream on OTT.

The Yoodlee brand of “fearless filmmaking” has found favour with audiences and critics alike with 13 films on Netflix, 4 on Disney+ Hotstar, 3 on Zee5 and 2 on Amazon Prime Video.

Yoodlee has now entered the web show space with Hunter- Tootega Nahi Todega starring Suniel Shetty on Amazon MiniTV and United Kacche starring Sunil Grover on Zee5. Both the shows have pleased the audience and entered the Ormax top 5 streamed shows of the week in the first week of their release.

ABOUT UFO PRODUCTION

The company UFO was created in 2009 by William Jéhannin and Stéphane Auclaire with the main activity of distribution of films in theatres. Today, the catalog of UFO has about fifty titles – fiction, documentaries, of different nationalities. Subsequently, UFO Production was created by William Jéhannin in 2015 to strengthen the viability of the production activity within UFO.

Our first production was John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, a documentary by Julien Faraut about the famous tennis player John McEnroe, presented at the Berlinale 2018. The State against Mandela and the Others, a documentary directed by Nicolas Champeaux and Gilles Porte about the trail of Nelson Mandela, was presented next at the Cannes Film Festival 2018.

Currently, UFO Production is debuting its first fiction feature Agra, the new film by Kanu Behl, director of acclaimed Titli, at Director’s Fortnight and developing Les Sorcières de l’Orient, the new project by Julien Faraut.

ABOUT O28 FILMS

O28 Films is a film company created by Kanu Behl and is focused on producing original, transgressive work that highlights Indian and global independent voices that need support within the fast-changing entertainment landscape.