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Arthouse outfit Mubi has debuted the first trailer for director Rahul Jain’s upcoming documentary film Invisible Demons, which chronicles the lives of a handful of people as they navigate environmental decrepitude and dystopian summer-time weather in India’s capital New Delhi. Invisible Demons will arrive on Mubi next month, after a globe-trotting festival tour that took the film to Cannes, London, Seattle, Zurich, Mumbai, Athens and Helsinki.

The cream of the current crop of young Indian documentary filmmakers were on fire during the annual Doc Day at the Cannes Film Market, discussing ways of expressing dissent within India’s current political dispensation.

Since 2014, India has been ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” is showing as a special screening at the festival and previously won the documentary grand jury prize at Sundance. It follows Delhi-based Muslim brothers Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, who, against the backdrop of the territory’s polluted atmosphere and escalating sectarian violence, devote their lives to saving the black kite bird species.

“I was absolutely certain that this film was not a snapshot of the current political moment; this film’s main interests were ecological and the human-bird relationship,” Sen said. “However, the last couple of years, especially in Delhi, have been chaotic, and it doesn...

One of the most eye-opening developments of the last couple of years is certainly the way we have experienced the consequences of globalization, exploitation and, in general, the growing gap between the world’s populations in terms of wealth, opportunity and many other factors. While the pandemic and the immigration waves are perhaps just the proverbial tip of the iceberg, there are other, more subtle developments taking place, whose repercussions we have so implemented in our daily lives, that we have come to accept them as normal, even though they are not. In India, the idea of being the world’s fastest growing economy is one of these aforementioned developments whose consequences, from the most obvious to the more subtle ones, come to light little by little. In his exploration of his home country’s textile industry and its workers in his 2016 documentary “Machines”, director Rahul Jain continues his venture...

Progress is judged on industrialisation, comments one factory owner in Invisible Demons. Perhaps trying to throw his interviewer - director Rahul Jain - some optimism, he suggests nature will correct it, the implication being that the impact of pollution will eventually be rendered insignificant.

It’s safe to say that Jain doesn’t agree. In this follow-up to 2017’s Machines, he turns his attention to Delhi, a city regularly ranked as one of the world’s most polluted, and one struggling to meet the challenges of climate change. Punctuated by reports from Indian broadcaster Ndtv that are utilised for ominous ambience as well as their factual portent, these transmissions ground the film in a sobering reality, but the film’s most powerful moments are almost entirely visual.

Invincible Demons is a film that understands the aesthetic appeal of environmental abuse, but it doesn’t titillate with images of eco-collapse or...

Participant is teaming up with leading French sales agent MK2 Films and Endeavor Content to represent worldwide distribution rights on “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” the anticipated feature debut of Lebanese filmmaker Mounia Akl.

“Costa Brava, Lebanon” will be headlined by Lebanese star and filmmaker Nadine Labaki (“Capernaum”), alongside Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri (“The Band’s Visit”). The pair will play a couple who decide to leave the toxic pollution of their home city of Beirut, hoping to build a utopian existence in a pristine home in the mountains. This dream life is shattered when a landfill is built right outside its fence, bringing the garbage and corruption they hoped to leave behind to its door. As the trash rises, so do the tensions in their perfect home.

Akl, an alumni of Cannes’ Cinefondation, previously directed the critically-acclaimed short film “Submarine” in 2015. The student short was nominated for a BAFTA and played at Toronto and SXSW,...