Banaras Film Festival at the CII Banaras Biennale: Goutam Ghose Curates Cinema at BHU
Biennale is Italian for "every two years", which makes an inaugural biennale a statement of intent: a promise that there will be a second. The CII Banaras Biennale 2026, which runs from 27 November to 31 December, is making that promise with a film festival at its centre.
The Banaras Film Festival is curated by Goutam Ghose and held at the Omkarnath Thakur Auditorium, Banaras Hindu University.
What the organisers have said
The biennale describes the festival as bringing "cinema into dialogue with the Biennale's wider artistic programme", celebrating the moving image "as a medium of storytelling, reflection and creative inquiry". Registration is through the link in the biennale's Instagram bio. Specific screening dates and titles had not been published with the announcement.
Why Goutam Ghose
Few Indian filmmakers are better suited to a festival in Kashi. Ghose's cinema has always been drawn to rivers, margins and the people who live on them.
Paar (1984), a Hindi film about a labouring couple forced to flee their village, won the National Award for Best Hindi Feature
Antarjali Jatra (1987) is set on a riverbank cremation ground, a subject that resonates in a city of ghats
Padma Nadir Majhi (1992) won him the National Award for Best Direction
Moner Manush (2010) is about the Baul mystic Lalon Fakir
A curator with that body of work suggests a programme attentive to place, faith and ordinary lives, which is precisely what a festival inside BHU should offer.
The biennale around it
The CII Banaras Biennale is an industry-led cultural initiative with Gayatri Sinha as lead curator, under the theme "Kashi / Light: City as Sensorium". Its venues include Bharat Kala Bhavan, BHU's museum, alongside archives and heritage sites across Varanasi. Partners include the Ministry of Culture, the Government of Uttar Pradesh, BHU and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
If you are planning a winter of art travel, the India Biennale in Delhi opens on 4 December.
Frequently asked questions
Who curates the Banaras Film Festival?
Filmmaker Goutam Ghose.
Where is it held?
At the Omkarnath Thakur Auditorium, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.
When is the CII Banaras Biennale 2026?
From 27 November to 31 December 2026.
How do I register?
Through the link in the Banaras Biennale's Instagram bio.
Kenneth Hopkins is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AltBollywood. Indofuturist, posthumanist and unapologetically Indocentric, he describes himself as an epimemeticist, a swaraji, a freakonomist, a lexicographer and a cartochronicler, mapping the ideas, words and quiet shifts that shape Indian entertainment. Follow him on Instagram at @kennethhopkins.
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