At WAVES 2025, amidst the buzz and spotlight of India’s booming entertainment industry, a quieter but far more urgent voice emerged, from the country’s Northeast. A panel of filmmakers and actors came to Mumbai not to ask for applause, but for access. Not for awards, but for acknowledgment.
For decades, Northeast India has carried the weight of invisibility in Indian cinema. It’s a region with deep-rooted cultures, languages, and traditions, yet it remains sidelined by an industry that claims to celebrate diversity but rarely looks beyond the Hindi belt or the southern giants.
Veteran filmmaker Jahnu Barua called the region a “reservoir of talent.” And it is. But talent doesn’t thrive in isolation. It needs platforms, funding, policy support, and most of all, an audience that cares. Actor Jatin Bora’s plea for dedicated OTT platforms wasn’t a pitch, it was a lifeline. In an era where even indie filmmakers in metros have global reach through digital means, why do voices from the Northeast still feel like they’re shouting into a void?
The issue isn’t just technological. It’s emotional. It’s about a part of the country feeling unseen, unheard, and left out. Ravi Sarma reminded us that the Northeast holds “millions of beautiful and unique stories.” Aimee Baruah spoke of preserving languages through film, not as a luxury, but as a necessity. Every lost language takes with it a worldview, a rhythm of life. Film can capture that. But only if we let it.
Meanwhile, young filmmakers like Haobam Paban Kumar and Dominic Sangma continue to create, not because the system helps them, but despite it. They push forward with grit and grace, telling stories rooted in local soil, even when there’s no distribution, no marketing, no policy cushion to fall back on.
The truth is this: we have spent too long treating the Northeast as an afterthought. We remember it during floods, border tensions, or when a film wins an international award. But what about every other day? What about the storytellers who never get a seat at the table?
The panel ended with a call for collaboration, between governments, investors, and studios. But what’s really needed is empathy. The kind that leads to real, sustained investment. To policies that don’t just acknowledge the region’s potential but actively nurture it. To OTT platforms that don’t treat Northeast cinema as a box to tick, but as stories worth spotlighting.
India doesn’t lack for stories. It lacks the willingness to hear them all.
Until we fix that, we’ll keep calling ourselves diverse. But we won’t truly be.