The trailer of Ashva (A White Horse’s Neigh) — a film by Aneek Chaudhuri — was officially unveiled at the India Pavilion of Cannes Film Festival. Now, the trailer returns to Calcutta — a city that has shaped the philosophical undertones of the film. On July 30, the director will be present at Alliance Française du Bengale for a Q&A session following the screening, offering a glimpse into the spiritual and linguistic intricacies of this unique cinematic creation.

A Natural Home

“The Alliance Française du Bengale, with its longstanding commitment to cultural exchange and language education, is a fitting venue for a film that embodies the fusion of French linguistic poetics and Indian spiritual lexicon. More than just a venue, the Alliance becomes an interlocutor — a space that allows Sanskrit and French to converse across architecture, audience, and artistic intent. In launching the trailer in this historic French institution, the event becomes a symbol of cross-cultural solidarity. It is a reminder that cinema is not just an artistic form — it is a conversation between tongues, gestures, and silences,” said Aneek.

A White Horse Between Worlds

While the film’s French title pays homage to the traditions of French art-house cinema, the Sanskrit elements firmly ground it in India’s timeless heritage. “This is not simply a bilingual film — it is polyphonic in spirit, using language not for translation, but for layering meaning. Where Sanskrit chants evoke the transcendental and the ritualistic, French is used to unpack the interiority of the characters — their doubt, decay, and desire. The film’s soundscape — crafted as much through silence as through dialogue — becomes a harmonic field where the echoes of a Vedic hymn can merge with a whisper from Camus,” said Aneek.

Produced through an Indo-Austrian collaboration, the film is a cross-cultural creation, with artistic and philosophical threads drawn from India’s spiritual thought and Europe’s existential traditions. “Austria contributes a minimalist aesthetic and an atmospheric precision to the film, while India brings a palette of metaphors, ritual structures, and linguistic nuance. Together, the cultures find unity in the horse — a mythical, symbolic being that exists in both Vedic lore and Western prophecy. The neigh becomes not just a sound, but a symbol: of restlessness, rupture, rebirth,” said Aneek.

From Cannes to Calcutta

The trailer’s earlier launch at the India Pavilion at Cannes was met with critical interest for its audacity of language, visual solemnity, and philosophical inquiry. “Cannes, a space often populated with world cinema in familiar formats, witnessed a trailer that chose Sanskrit as much as it did French, without compromise or explanation. Now, returning to Calcutta, the film finds its emotional and linguistic homecoming. The city, with its own hybrid identity, yet deeply Indian at its soul, is the ideal host for such a film,” said Aneek.

For audiences, this offers a rare opportunity to understand the decisions behind the language usage, the sound design rooted in ancient chanting, and how silence itself becomes a language in the film. Aneek Chaudhuri’s previous works have addressed themes like identity, loss, and death, but this film is arguably his most experimental yet — a metaphysical chamber piece where words, when spoken, echo like hymns in a vast cosmic theatre.

“In a cinematic landscape increasingly shaped by market trends and subtitles, a film that is anchored in Sanskrit and French is both an act of courage and a declaration of trust in the intelligence of its audience. It is a reminder that cinema is, at its core, a sensorial, philosophical, and sonic experience, and that some stories demand to be told in ancient tongues to awaken timeless truths,” said Aneek.

The film is not here to entertain in a conventional sense. It is here to unsettle, to provoke reflection, and to offer a spiritual riddle wrapped in ritual, silence, and surreal beauty.