"I want to make films about things I'm conflicted about rather than things I am sure about," says 31-year-old filmmaker Theja Rio.
His breakout debut feature, Angh, premiered in competition at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and won the Platform Award, qualifying it for the Academy Awards. Set in 1962 in Nagaland, the film follows a Konyak village chief, Anghbha (Anghlong Konyak), and the absurd and unceremonious way that his world — as carefully beaded and twined as a tribal neckpiece — crumbles around him. As THR India mentions in our review of the film, "New worlds are opening up as old ones are being sealed shut. This is the trauma of transformation. It must be endured to be enjoyed."
Angh is best described as a work of ethnographic fiction, though it often transcends that label. Anghbha's existential enemy (if that's the word) are the American Baptist missionaries, fetching up with their crosses, their modern medicines and their English. But their ways are polite and their pedagogy unrushed. Anghbha, we gather slowly, is not a mute sentry of tradition; he bristles with a more personal flame, one familiar to men of all time and tribe: the loss of one's pride.
Rio was born and raised in Kohima and studied filmmaking at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in Beaconsfield, UK. Angh grew out of an eponymous short film he directed in 2020.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, Rio spoke about his influences, shooting in 16mm film, and the complex, delicate history of his homeland.
What was your standout moment from TIFF 2026?
For our world premiere, there was a 500-seater hall, and we had 40 members of the Naga diaspora community in Canada who came to watch the film. They all wore their Naga traditional attire, very vibrant in colour. Four of my cast members—all non-actors—were also present. The organisers of TIFF told me it was one of the greatest screenings they’ve ever had and it gave them goosebumps. Being able to experience the whole thing through the perspective of my cast and the Naga community was a big high for me.
You also met filmmaker Lee Chang-Dong at the festival.
That was an amazing and a full-circle moment for us because during the pre-production of Angh as a tonal reference. We met him briefly. I was feeling a bit shy. My cinematographer, Adam Pietkiewicz, and I were trying to keep a distance. It was our producer, Nancy Nisa Beso, who initiated the conversation. We told him about our film and that it’s in the Platform competition. Lee was part of the Platform competition jury a couple of years ago. He told us, via his translator, “Congratulations, it’s a big deal.” Just to be able to shake hands with that man and take a picture with him — it was amazing.
Unlike your last short film, Ade (On A Sunday), which mines your own life experiences and memories and is in the Tenyidie language, which is your mother tongue, Angh is set in the past and portrays the indigenous Konyak culture. Did you feel an added sense of responsibility towards the subject?
When the film industry of a state is at a nascent stage, any feature film that you put out in the international circuit comes with its inherent sense of responsibility. Although I also find it slightly arrogant to frame one’s work like that. For Angh, we worked extremely closely with the Konyak community from the script development stage. They were holding our hands throughout the process and eventually gave us the seal of approval for the script. The set was completely built by the Konyak community, who spent around six months in the location building the houses.
From an academic perspective, a lot of books were read. During film school, my dissertation was on ethno-fiction films — how a film follows the perspective of the subject and not the explorer. My lead is a non-actor who performs standup comedy. In fact, the singing that you hear in the film, those are all folks songs that he knew from his village and picked up.
What are your biggest influences from cinema?
In my teens, I was hugely into Hollywood stuff — the Tarantinos, the Finchers, the Coens. I still admire those filmmakers. In 2015, I attended a screenwriting programme in Sicily, Italy, which opened me up to the vastness of world cinema. I watched a lot of Akira Kurosawa, Ozu, Tarkovsky. Abbas Kiarostami is one of my favourite filmmakers and Where Is the Friend’s House? is one of my favourite films of all time.
For Angh, my biggest influence were the films of Columbian director Ciro Guerra, especially Embrace of the Serpent. The film is based on the diaries of an European explorer and his travels into a region of the Amazonian jungle. But the film is equally about Karamakate, the tribal character who accompanies the white explorers in the film. Guerra is someone who balances magic realism and surrealism with historical realism in his films. When you’re trying to make indigenous cinema, with its profusion of dream, myth, memory, ritual and spirituality, it’s an interesting line to tread.
Where did your co-writer James Davis came in?
James is someone I met in film school. He’s Welsh, and we discovered we have a lot of commonalities in our writing. He’s also deeply interested in intergenerational conflict, fathers and sons etc. I wrote the first five or six drafts of Angh and then James came on board to balance my writing out. My writing tends to be very reserved, sometimes too repressed in its nature. James does quite the opposite; he’s very visceral, very expressive. For instance, the conversation between the queen chief and Anghma was mostly silent in my draft. The father-son relationship was also very distant and repressed. But James was like, “You know, we need to get the audience on board a bit with Anghbah”. It led to the more emotional scenes in the film.
Like the scene where he bathes with his son and they splash water at each other.
Absolutely! Although that bit was improvised.
Your film documents a history of rupture and loss without feeling like an attack on missionaries.
I want to make films about things that I’m conflicted about rather than things I’m sure about. When you’re absolutely sure of something and you make a film about it, it can easily become an agenda or propaganda.
American Baptist missionary work was transformative for my home state and its people. Though it's as drastic as it was in the 1960s, we’re still facing its hangover. There’s an everyday battle trying to balance the old and the new, the traditional versus the modern. In Nagaland, we celebrate all our culture, our festivals, our rituals, but at the same time, we’re also such a modern state, in love with modern music, fashion, pop culture.
When I was writing the script, I wanted to make sure I maintain a point of neutrality. Is Christianity responsible for a big part of the indigenous culture dying? Yes. But at the same time, Christianity is also responsible for a lot of peace that has come to the region. We used to be headhunters. The last headhunting was recorded in the 1970s. Village warfare was also a big part of our history. By maintaining a point of neutrality, I was able to find complexities on both sides of the coin.
I discovered the Konyaks are passionate gunsmiths. Anghbah, in the film, carries a musket.
I’ve been to Mon district (where the film is set) a couple of times and I’ve met people who are in the gun business. These were old, traditional, muzzle-loading guns. I observed how they make their guns and how they keep them and clean them. Gunpowder had reached the region even before the European colonists did. It not just in the Konyak region. Even in Kohima, where I grew up, almost every household has a gun. It's just something that we grew up with.
Tell me about shooting on 16mm film. You also shot Ade on 16mm, but this is a full-length feature.
Angh is heavily inspired by the archival footage of the American missionaries in Nagaland in the 1960s. There’s something about that footage that has a lot of atmosphere and mystique. There’s a certain texture to it. Every day, it felt like I was shooting myself in the foot with that decision. We would shoot for a stretch of four-five days, take our footage to Dimapur, and from Dimapur we would send it by train to Mumbai for processing. The whole train journey was another three to four days. So by the time it’s processed and scanned, and by the time you see the footage, it’s been a week. You have spent the whole week shooting without knowing how your footage looks.
I had an experienced DOP and I really trusted my team. So we managed to pull through.
What do you make of the mainland making movies and shows about Nagaland and the northeast?
I have watched them. Because we've been so underrepresented as a culture in our national cinema, I appreciate the attempt. Obviously, sometimes, there are a lot of missteps along the way. But we cannot always focus on the portrayal and ignore the exposure it brings. I know a lot of Naga people who have been involved in these projects. Through these opportunities, they’ve experienced working on film sets and being a part of a larger industry.
Of course, there’s always room for improvement. Some things can be better. I would also point to a growing wave of indigenous filmmakers from Nagaland. Some of the people who assisted me on Angh have amazing, bold ideas they want to make into films.
What is your next film?
I've already shot my second feature. It’s also shot on 16mm. It’s a coming-of-age film and an expanded version of my short film, Ade (On a Sunday). It follows an eight-year-old boy and his first brush with the adult world. It's a much smaller film than Angh is, but it’s also very close to my heart. I have also written scripts for four other feature films, including the first draft of a small-town murder mystery I want to make.