Indian Film Festival in Italy: Milan, Turin, Bologna and Genoa Turn to 'Women of India' From 13 November

The political scientist Joseph Nye gave us the phrase soft power in 1990, to describe the influence a country gains not by force or payment, but by attraction: the appeal of its ideas, its culture and its stories.

Cinema has always been one of the more effective instruments of that kind of power. It is also one of the least discussed. The latest example comes from northern Italy.

The festival

The Consulate General of India in Milan has announced an Indian Film Festival across four cities: Milan, Turin, Bologna and Genoa. It begins on 13 November 2026.

The festival is being organised with institutional support from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.

The theme

This edition is built around a single idea:

Women of India: Stories of Courage, Choice and Change

In the consulate's words, the festival will celebrate "the courage, resilience and determination of Indian women as they overcome challenges, make their own choices and shape their destinies."

It is a well-chosen frame. Some of the most widely discussed Indian films of recent years have been those in which women make the decisive choices, and a theme of this kind allows a programme to move across languages, regions and genres while retaining a clear thread.

A consulate that screens films

This is not the consulate's first venture into cinema. Earlier this year, as part of an Indian Film Festival held with the support of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and NFDC, it screened Shershaah, with Italian subtitles, in Vicenza in January.

The pattern is instructive. A consulate's formal work is administrative: visas, documents, trade. Its informal work is to make a country legible to the people among whom it operates. A subtitled screening in a provincial Italian city does that rather well. It asks nothing of the audience except an evening and some curiosity.

What we do not yet know

The announcement does not list the films, venues or screening times. The consulate has asked those interested to follow its official social media channels for registration details and updates.

That will matter for one obvious reason. A theme as rich as Courage, Choice and Change will be judged by the films selected to carry it. The difference between a dutiful programme and a revealing one usually lies in whether it includes work from beyond Hindi cinema, and whether it finds room for recent independent films alongside familiar titles.

Why it matters

For the Indian diaspora in northern Italy, the festival is a chance to see Indian films on a cinema screen. For Italian audiences, it is something more interesting: an introduction to India told through the lives of its women rather than through its monuments.

That, in the end, is what Nye meant. Influence that comes from being understood tends to last longer than influence that comes from being seen.

For another festival carrying Indian work to a European audience this week, read our note on Interfilm Berlin.

This article is based on the Consulate General of India in Milan's announcement. Programme details had not been published at the time of writing.

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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 Culture & Markets. Follow him on Instagram at @kennethhopkins.