Masaan

Masaan announced Neeraj Ghaywan as a major new voice in Indian cinema. Set in Varanasi — the city of death and liberation — it follows two storylines that never intersect but echo each other at every turn. Devi (Richa Chadha) is a young woman whose life is upended when a police officer discovers she has been sexting with a boyfriend. The "moral policing" that follows — blackmail, public shaming, the destruction of her reputation — is handled with devastating restraint. Deepak (Vicky Kaushal, in his breakthrough role) is a young man from the Dom community, whose hereditary occupation is cremating bodies at the ghats. His romance with an upper-caste girl ends in tragedy, and his grief becomes a meditation on the caste system's cruelty.

The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes and launched Kaushal into stardom. But its real achievement is in the texture: the smoke from the burning ghats that hangs over every frame, the way grief feels like a physical weight in the editing, and the film's quiet insistence that life, even in Masaan — the cremation ground — can hold moments of grace.