TRIS February 2026 presents exhibitions, film screenings, and conversations in Delhi, highlighted by a TRIS–WIFF Mumbai collaboration, independent cinema showcases, and Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s Khwaja Ahmad Abbas Memorial Lecture on creativity, ethics, and social responsibility.

February 2026 at the Tuli Research Centre for India Studies unfolds as a richly layered cultural and intellectual journey, bringing together exhibitions, film screenings, academic presentations, conversations, and mentorship dialogues under the larger umbrella of Self-Discovery: Rediscovering India. Curated with characteristic rigour, the month-long programme positions creative practice not merely as artistic output, but as a form of social inquiry—one that interrogates history, ethics, belief systems, labour, and the individual’s place within collective life.  

Spanning modern and contemporary Indian art, cinema history, archival research, and urgent debates around creative responsibility, the TRIS February calendar moves fluidly between the classroom, the gallery, and the screening room. From exhibitions on Chittaprosad, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, and vintage cinematic publicity art, to conversations with filmmakers, scholars, and cultural thinkers, the programme foregrounds the idea that creative expression in India has always been deeply intertwined with moral vision, political awareness, and lived reality.

Saeed Akhtar Mirza delivers the Khwaja Ahmad Abbas Memorial Trust Lecture, reflecting on Abbas’s lifelong commitment to cinema as a moral and social force. Revisiting Abbas’s humanist vision, the lecture connects past struggles with present realities, asking how filmmakers today can continue to speak truth to power while remaining deeply rooted in social responsibility.

TRIS × WIFF Mumbai | 9–10 February: Cinema as Social Responsibility

At the heart of this expansive programme lies a particularly compelling collaboration between TRIS and the Waterfront Indie Film Festival (WIFF) Mumbai, unfolding over 9th and 10th February 2026. This two-day engagement brings together six independent filmmakers whose works were part of the WIFF selection, placing contemporary independent cinema in direct conversation with some of India’s most influential cinematic minds.

Rather than treating films as isolated artefacts, this collaboration foregrounds cinema as a living, questioning practice—one that negotiates ethics, survival, faith, memory, and community. Across documentary, fiction, and experimental forms, the selected films explore self-discovery not as an inward retreat, but as something shaped by belief systems, mortality, and social structures. 

The screenings are accompanied by two intensive mentorship and panel discussions that ask a deceptively simple but deeply urgent question: Is there a meaningful space for social responsibility within the creative artistic spirit today?

On 9 February, filmmakers Divya Kharnare, Sivaranjini, Simar Singh, Jalpan Nanavati, Vidar Joshi, and Kabeer Khurana engage in dialogue with veteran filmmaker Saeed Akhtar Mirza, whose own body of work has long interrogated power, marginalisation, and ethical cinema. The conversation examines how young filmmakers negotiate Indian identity, material survival, and creative integrity in an increasingly precarious cultural economy.

The following day, 10 February, the dialogue deepens with Dibakar Banerjee joining the filmmakers for a second mentorship session. Known for his uncompromising engagement with contemporary India, Banerjee’s presence reframes the discussion around resistance, form, and the political possibilities of storytelling within—and against—mainstream structures.

Six Films, Shared Questions

The six films screened over the two days form a striking constellation of concerns and cinematic approaches. From P for Paparazzi, which places the glamour economy of celebrity culture against migrant labour and moral compromise, to Victoria, where faith and desire collide in a single day in suburban Kerala, the films insist on intimate, human-scale storytelling.

Karel & Arnost reflects quietly on time, inheritance, and unrealised dreams; Death Walks into a Bar turns mortality into an unexpected conversation on empathy; And The Sun Said uses experimental silence and repetition to interrogate patriarchy and belief; and Kabeer Khurana’s Marottichal documents the transformative power of imagination and collective will in a village reshaped by chess.

Seen together, the films resist spectacle in favour of reflection, asking how cinema can bear witness without simplification—and how filmmakers can remain ethically alert in a world driven by speed, consumption, and visibility.

A Living Dialogue Between Generations

What makes the TRIS–WIFF collaboration particularly significant is its refusal to separate pedagogy from practice. These sessions are not post-screening formalities but living conversations—between generations, between institutions, and between differing cinematic philosophies. By placing emerging filmmakers in direct dialogue with Saeed Akhtar Mirza and Dibakar Banerjee, TRIS creates a rare space where questions of form, politics, and responsibility are debated openly, without hierarchy.