Halfway through 2026, The Hollywood Reporter India editorial team sat down to do what they do best: debate loudly, passionately, and at considerable length. The result is this list of ten films that, in their collective judgement, have been the best of what Indian cinema had to offer in 2026.
The methodology was straightforward, even if the conversations were anything but. Every film under consideration had been reviewed by THR India — online or on video — ensuring that each selection is grounded in our published critical perspective. From that reviewed pool, the team debated each title against a set of core criteria: the strength of the performances, the technical accomplishment, the quality of the screenplay and the assurance of direction.
Films that piqued their sustained interest — the ones they kept returning to, defending, and disagreeing on — tended to rise. A great performance could carry a film onto the list; equally, so could a screenplay or directorial vision. What didn’t make the cut: spectacle without substance, or ambition without execution.
This is not a definitive ranking, but a considered selection reflecting where Indian cinema stands at the midpoint of a rich and evolving year.
Here are the ten films, listed in alphabetical order:
It’s impossible to imagine that Balan: The Boy was once just an idea that was scribbled onto a notepad before it grew into plot points, acts and scenes. It doesn’t feel engineered or constructed; instead, you gradually dip your feet into its flow. It has its moods, its high moments and a very specific type of lightness, but the elegance of its storytelling is such that you feel like you’re listening to a person recalling the most striking set of memories — ones so vivid that they’ve defined his childhood.
It’s a film that belongs to young Adhisheshan K.R. and Farzana, who plays his mother — credit too to whoever made these casting calls. Both have the same big, bulging eyes, the same ability to conjure the big bad world through them alone. We’re not just watching a film about the loss of innocence, but about children who are never even given the choice to remain innocent. Boyhood has seldom felt this painful.
Krishnadas Murali’s Bharathanatyam 2 Mohiniyattam is that rare sequel that’s even better than the original. It takes clever ideas from the first film, such as the crookedness of its patriarch, and replants the film’s hilarious character into a fresh context. Over here, the stakes multiply several folds with a regular confusion comedy about an illicit affair, turning into the darkest of dark comedies about a family coming together to dispose of a body. Think Drishyam, but the mood is anything but serious.
The pop cultural references from older films then adds another layer of magic to make this film a wildly original swing at the concept of skeletons, dropping out of the closet one by one, leading to some of the wildest LOL moments of this year in Malayalam.
Dug Dug is what one expects independent cinema to be at its most flexible: inventive, audacious, uncompromising, sharp, unruly almost. Not to sound like a cliché, but they don’t make ’em like these anymore. Imagine a film where no human is the protagonist, a motorbike is the central character, a new religion is the narrative, and an India that loves telling itself stories is the plot twist.
Loosely inspired by fact-is-stranger-than-fiction events, Ritwik Pareek’s montage-coded movie revolves around the escalation of folklore around a seemingly regular highway accident in Rajasthan. Before we know it, the film morphs into a mischievous satire on blind faith, superstition and the culture of divinity in a country that needs to believe in something higher to make sense of everyday truths. It unfolds like a playful feature-length advert in which the product being sold is reverence itself — and the money-grabbing myth of the modern miracle.
I suspect history will be kinder to Ikkis than the box office was. Sriram Raghavan’s war drama, split across two timelines, arrived on the first day of the year. I was silly enough to assume that this was a sign of things to come. But it remains a fleeting reminder of what mainstream Hindi cinema can, or used to, be: a meditation on patriotism rather than a loud affirmation of it.
Ikkis is the kind of historical biopic that you want to protect from the modern world. The story of an old Indian father visiting the site of his war-hero son’s death across the border is etched in the fabric of an alternate Bollywood landscape — one where humanity is the only loser when nations go to battle. I know it sounds idealistic and old-school, but who better than Sriram Raghavan to deconstruct a genre into a wistful sum of its parts?
The life cycle of an Imtiaz Ali movie is an Imtiaz Ali movie of its own: love at third or fourth sight, a coming-of-age arc, belated appreciation, retrospective growth. But the beauty of Main Vaapas Aaunga — besides just being a remarkable film with an all-time performance by Naseeruddin Shah — is that it has compressed this journey into its first few weeks. In doing so, it has acquired a rare word-of-mouth glow for a Hindi film director who is no longer reduced to the identity of online cultdom.
The generational trauma of the Partition comes dressed as a war-torn love story narrated by a dementia-afflicted old man struggling to tell his story. In most movies, he would’ve been staged as an inspiring success story who rebuilt his life in a new country. But a historical moment and its consequences are reframed as a dance between memory and truth; between the tragedy of displacement and the way we choose to remember — and forget — it.
Set in Sikkim, Tribeny Rai’s Nepali-language debut feature film Shape of Momo captures the bracing and fragile return of Bishnu (Gaumaya Gurung), from Delhi, back to her village. She commands the respect that men in her community get, but her desire to assert herself as a woman gets complicated by the inherent class structure, at the apex of which she finds herself.
It is a tender story of three generations of women living under one roof, each embodying a fight, a vulnerability and a hope. If you don’t want to take our word, trust Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti and Payal Kapadia, who all came on board as executive producers.
Almost every line in the latest Telugu musical Sing Geetham is sung. But it isn’t a creative choice. A few minutes into the film, it’s clear that it is a storytelling choice — the fury of a tree lover (Ahilya Bamroo) sets off a series of inexplicable events in a mining village. Through the course of the film, you also realise that music is deeply intentional, a choice that doesn’t only give it a technical edge but gives it meaning and life.
Singeetham Srinivasa Rao takes a land drama and infuses it with characteristic childlike wonderment, bringing us a frothy musical that’s also an effective environmental piece. It also works in the film’s favour that it is designed like an engrossing children’s fantasy. There’s a sense of innocent humour that pervades the film; clear moral lessons are packed in, characters come of age to superbly written emotional payoffs, and there is a neat little ecological lesson at the end of it all.
Thaai Kizhavi marked an assured debut for director Sivakumar Murugesan, who delivered a socially rooted comedy with confidence, warmth, and emotional depth. Refusing to follow familiar commercial beats, Murugesan patiently builds his story before culminating in a deeply rewarding final act. At the centre of it all is Radikaa Sarathkumar; the veteran actress delivers an imperious performance as Pavunuthaayi, a feared and respected elderly moneylender in a village, whose sudden illness brings her three estranged sons back under one roof as they all clamour for a share of her wealth.
Co-produced by actor Sivakarthikeyan, the slice-of-life Tamil film was a welcome relief from the other tentpole action vehicles released this year and emerged as a box-office success.
Director Mohit Takalkar’s abrasive romantic drama, Toh Ti Ani Fuji is set partly in Pune and partly in Japan. The former is where the lovers (played by Lalit Prabhakar and Mrinmayee Godbole) began their stormy affair and parted ways, and the latter is where they run into each other, years later. Serendipity makes them relive and reconcile with their brutal parting.
Keep an eye out for the break-up scene, staged with a tenor, texture and frank violence rare in Indian cinema. Besides, Japan is a country that is not often visited by Indian films, and the film’s palette opens up in Japan in a way that makes Pune feel cloistered yet homely. Do we become new people in new countries?
This box-office miracle stands currently as the highest grossing film ever from the Kerala market. It went on to gross upwards of ₹230 crore overall and is now globally the fifth-highest grossing Malayalam film of all time. What makes this feat truly remarkable is how the film’s lead actors debuted with their first full-length roles in this film. Hashir and gang were creators on Instagram before this film, and their star power is emblematic of how the industry is changing and where the next set of superstars could come from.
It’s also a delicate film that spoke about drug abuse, migration and brotherhood through a sensitive lens, without the film ever dipping into melodrama to make its point. Few films recently have captured the lives of the 20-somethings in Kerala like this film has. A third part to the franchise has only added to the excitement to the industry’s most successful franchise.