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IFFI 2025: Prime Video’s 'Daldal' Presents a Grittier Crime Drama With a New Kind of Female Lead
A first look at Daldal at the International Film Festival of India introduces Bhumi Pednekar as a conflicted Mumbai cop navigating trauma, power and a city’s murky moral codes.
Prime Video brought an early peek of its upcoming Hindi series Daldal to the 56th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, using the festival platform to showcase a darker, more psychologically driven crime narrative than the service typically puts forward.
The series, based on Vish Dhamija’s novel Bhendi Bazaar, follows Mumbai’s newly appointed DCP Rita Ferreira — played by Bhumi Pednekar — whose pursuit of a brutal killer forces her into corners of the city she would rather avoid, and into aspects of her own history she has spent years outrunning. The adaptation has been created for streaming by filmmaker Suresh Triveni and is produced by Abundantia Entertainment’s Vikram Malhotra and Triveni, with Amrit Raj Gupta directing.
At IFFI, a short in-room teaser gave the audience its first sense of the show’s unsettling mood. Pednekar, joined by the show’s creators, spoke later at a panel titled “Beyond the Stereotype: Redefining Women and Power in Modern Storytelling,” where the team unpacked the show’s attempt to move away from familiar depictions of women in crime dramas.
Delhi
Pednekar described Rita as a character built around stillness rather than swagger. “She doesn’t speak as much as she acts,” the actor said, adding that the role demanded she communicate through physical tension rather than dialogue. She called it one of the toughest preparations of her career, especially because the character is written with what she termed “anti-hero” shades rarely given to women on screen.
Triveni, who had earlier directed Jalsa, said he was initially wary of telling another crime story. “You assume you’ll fall into the usual tropes,” he said. “But Daldal isn’t built around the question of who did it. We were more interested in why people do the things they do — the rage, the contradictions, the darkness that exists in everyone.”
Alongside Pednekar, the series stars Aditya Rawal and Samara Tijori.