Angh

Modernity arrives in several garbs all at once. It shifts between assimilation, a promise of progress and a threat of complete cultural loss. Development can wholly wash over a sharp sense of identity that once existed, chipping away at it one by one. Premiering in Platform competition at the Toronto International Film Festival 2026, Theja Rio’s brilliantly immersive debut, Angh, understands every shade of this complex negotiation. Rio, born in Nagaland’s Kohima, brings alive the state’s churning historical moment as Christianity burst in the 1960s. At the centre of the quiet, reflective drama is a tribal chief, Anghba (Anghlong Konyak). He’s a mournful witness to his community’s transformation under the sway of an American missionary (Douglas James Henshall). There’s a gentle ache in Angh that seeps under your skin, without a hint of rush.

Aiming for a boar on the other side of the river, the Anghbha (Anghlong Konyak), or tribal chief, sights a “white ghost” floating by—a flesh and blood American missionary (Douglas James Henshall) on a boat, with his jeep and some Nagas who have converted. The music is ominous. The ghost waves at him—does the Angbha understand this gesture? The ghost takes out a camera and captures him in film—does the Angbha understand this technology? All we see is his face, shaped by doom. He is hunting the boar with a gun, and not bow and arrows, nor spears, so technology has seeped even into his cloistered world from beyond. What else has slipped through the cracks? What has he resisted?