‘Our film industry is almost non-existent’: Angh director Theja Rio reveals how he cast villagers for TIFF 2026 winner

Filmmaker Theja Rio has just pulled off a first for Nagaland at the Toronto International Film Festival. His debut feature Angh won the Platform Prize, making it the first film from the state to take home the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival ( TIFF ) 2026 award. The award was announced on Sunday, September 20. Angh was the only Indian film in this year’s Platform programme, which featured 12 films and is TIFF’s only juried competition.

Casting Angh was another challenge because Nagaland does not have a large professional film industry. Theja, who is 31, was born in Kohima, studied in Delhi and later graduated from the UK’s National Film and Television School. Instead of looking only for trained actors, he and his team went into villages to find people who already understood the world the film was trying to recreate.

In an interview with TIFF, he said, “We come from a region where the film industry is almost non-existent. So that meant we don’t have a lot of professional actors where we come from. We had to sort of go to the villages and street cast”.

That approach, Theja explained, also gave him something that traditional casting may not have. He added, “In each village, we were sort of averaging three or four people who would come in and these people have never set foot on a film set before. So they had no idea what they were getting into as well. I think the beautiful thing about casting non-actors is that you normally would cast someone who’s already close to the character in terms of just cultural background, personality, trait. So you already have someone who embodies the character and you have a three-dimensional character sort of walking around on set. So it’s a beautiful process and they come in with their glass empty. So it’s very, very nice for a director”.

The cast includes Anghlong Konyak, Sobino Rengma, Genpai Konyak, Amah Konyak and Wangton Konyak, alongside Douglas Henshall.

Set in the early 1960s, Angh is set in a remote Konyak village near the India-Myanmar border. The village has been deserted, but Anghba, its last surviving chief, refuses to leave. He stays behind with his ailing wife and his non-speaking young son while the world he knows slowly begins to disappear.

The arrival of an American missionary, played by BAFTA-winning Scottish actor Douglas Henshall, becomes part of that change. At the heart of the film is Anghba’s struggle to hold on to the customs and beliefs that have shaped his community as outside influences begin to alter the region.

Konyak is the film’s primary language, giving the story an added cultural specificity. The language is spoken by fewer than a quarter of a million people worldwide. Theja also chose to shoot the film on 16mm, with Adam Pietkiewicz behind the camera. His work earned him the TIFF Variety Artisan Award for cinematography.

Angh may be his feature debut, but the story has been with him for several years. The film expands on his 2021 short of the same name, which won a Special Jury Award at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

The feature premiered at TIFF on September 15.