Indian classic films are finding renewed life on the global stage, with restored versions travelling to major festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Toronto, and now the Berlin International Film Festival. Organizers said the screening of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989) played to a packed house. The audience extended beyond cinephiles, with several attendees saying they came because they follow Arundhati’s work. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur noted that representatives from Criterion, Berlin Classics, and MoMA were present to discuss the renewed momentum behind Indian film restoration.

​The film has been making headlines over the past few days after its writer and lead actor, Arundhati Roy decided to withdraw from the Berlinale after the film festival’s international jury president, Wim Wenders, said that filmmakers must stay out of politics. Announcing her withdrawal, Arundhati described the remarks as unconscionable.

However, Wim Wenders joined the Indian team at the Berlin Film Festival for the film’s screening. Before it began, director Pradip Krishen – who is also Arundhati Roy’s husband – addressed the audience.

He said, “I know she has a very special place for Berlin in her heart. Based on the two book tours I accompanied her on in Berlin, I believe Berlin loves her as well. But she has strong principles and strong beliefs, and I stand with her.”

​As part of the festival’s focus on film heritage and preservation, a masterclass on Indian film heritage was organized in conversation with Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, moderated by Josh Siegel. Dungarpur began by reflecting on the limited awareness of film preservation in India. Recalling his early efforts to restore Kalpana , a 1940s film by Uday Shankar, he described his shock at the condition of the reels.

“At the time, people in India barely understood what film preservation meant. Despite producing over a thousand films a year, we were losing our cinematic heritage. That realisation led me to document what was being lost, which eventually became a film itself, and later to founding a preservation initiative. It was Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan’s idea that I should establish a foundation to preserve our heritage.”

“The film was initially called Chapter 5 because it was about fifth-year students in that architecture school (as shown in the film). But we felt it was too generic a title. We wanted something that people in their 60s and 70s would relate to – and that’s why we chose the title we did. The film was screened on Doordarshan after 10.40 pm without any advance notice. It was almost as if the channel was ashamed to show it. After that, the film developed an underground following. It only lived on as a pirated, low-grade version on YouTube. It became a rite of passage for architecture students,” said director Pradip Krishen.

Josh Siegel placed the discussion in a broader institutional context. “MoMA has a long history of presenting Indian cinema dating back to the 1930s, particularly from the 1950s. I cannot overestimate the contribution you have made,” he said.

Dungarpur explained that the foundation chose to work across regions and languages. “We began restoring films across languages and regions – Malayalam, Odia, Manipuri, and others and also extended our work beyond India, collaborating on archival efforts in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. The focus has always been grassroots: training people, building smaller regional archives, and working directly on the ground.”