Berlinale 2026: Arundhati Roy’s cult film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and the ‘lunatic fringe’ goes to Berlin

After 37 years, Arundhati Roy and Pradip Krishen’s film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones will premiere at Berlinale Classics — underlining freer times and a disregard for homogenisation

In the first film she ever wrote, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, Arundhati Roy wears a red sari with a hat. I ask if the colour is political, and she responds with a laugh: “Well, yes, it’s red. It’s a lot of things. You can read whatever you want into it. I just love that red. The [book jacket of] Mother Mary Comes to Me is that red, too.”

The 1989 film was perceived to be lost, barring a bad print on YouTube. But now the whimsical cult campus comedy is restored, and set for a world premiere. Roy shares, however, that she hasn’t been able to rejoice because her beloved dog, Maati K. Lal, passed away last week.

Annie... will have its world premiere at Berlinale Classics in the 76th Berlin International Film Festival this month, 37 years after it was telecast (just once) on Doordarshan. Both Roy and the film’s director Pradip Krishen sound bemused at the idea of a global stage for a small project. “From today’s vantage point, it’s quite a wacky story,” Roy remarks.

The news is well-timed though, following on the heels of the Booker Prize-winning author’s memoir, Mother Mary..., which flew off the shelves the minute it landed five months ago. “It’s pure coincidence,” Roy attests. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of Film Heritage Foundation, which has restored the 16mm film in 4K resolution, adds, “We are also working on Pakeezah, Amma Ariyan, Samskara, and Imagi Ningthem. Annie… is the only one that was ready to be sent. This is the first time I have entered a film in Berlin [festival].”

The film was made for ₹12 lakh; Roy worked on all three of Krishen’s films: Massey Sahib (1985), Annie…, and Electric Moon (1992). She also donned three roles for Annie…: screenplay writer, actor, and art director-cum-production designer. “We were regarded by everyone as lunatic fringe. That’s a badge we wore quite proudly. Even within the new wave cinema or parallel cinema, we were the outliers,” says Krishen, the filmmaker-turned- environmentalist. Roy and Krishen were married and remain great friends.

Film stills, before and after restoration | Photo Credit: Courtesy Film Heritage Foundation