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Movie Name: Jugnuma
Directed by: Raam Reddy
Starring: Manoj Bajpayee, Priyanka Bose, Deepak Dobriyal, Tillotama Shome, Hiral Sidhu, Awan Pookot
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 118 Minutes
Release Date: 12 September, 2025
Language: Hindi, English
Rating:
Production Companies: Prspctvs Productions, Maxmedia, Sikhya Entertainment, Flip Films
Dev owns orchards and lives on a sprawling estate. After finding burnt trees Dev monitors workers and Nomads fall under suspicion. Despite night guards, a huge fire engulfs the mountainside. Dev uses violence in his search.
Jugnuma: Movie Overview
The Fable or Jugnuma is a 2024 film directed by Raam Reddy, starring Manoj Bajpayee, Hiral Sidhu, Priyanka Bose, Tillotama Shome, Awan Pookot and Deepak Dobriyal. Like Thithi (2016). The film is an Indian-American co-production, jointly produced by Pratap Reddy and Sunmin Park, under Prspctvs Productions and Maxmedia, respectively.
The Fable is the first Indian film to Win Best Film at the 38th Leeds International Film Festival, United Kingdom. It has also won the Special Jury Award at MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2024. The film premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival on February 16, 2024. It will compete in the festival’s Encounters segment, which features 14 other titles from around the globe. It is only the second Indian film in the last thirty years to premiere in one of the key competitive sections of the Berlin International Film Festival.
The film will release theatrically in India on 12 September 2025.
The film was shot in 16mm film at a remote village in Uttarakhand, India.
The film premiered at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2024. It was also selected for the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2024, where it competed in the South Asia Competition section and won the Special Jury Prize.
The film will release theatrically on 12 September 2025.
Movie Trailer:
Movie Review:
Manoj Bajpayee makes Raam Reddy’s meditative exploration of human hubris and guilt fly
Perched somewhere between magic and realism, filmmaker Raam Reddy spins an evocative cautionary tale of ecological and social decay in his sophomore film ‘Jugnuma: The Fable’
Coming at a time when the debate about the original inhabitant and the migrant/trespasser is raging across the world, young filmmaker Raam Reddy mounts a fable that fascinates with its subversive tone and veritable voice.
The atmospheric visuals and magic realism remind one of Marquez and Manoj Night Shyamalan, but Raam sets up his own leela in the hills of the Himalayas. In Jugnuma, Dev (Manoj Bajpayee) lords over the orchards that once belonged to the British masters. He has inherited the colonial privilege that he delegates to the locals to nurture his sprawling estate. Mundane meets the magical, as Raam opens a window to the Dev’s introspective nature. Suggesting the misplaced pride of being self-made, the genial master makes his own wings and glides over the hills to keep a check on the locals who work on his estate, look for possible trespassers, and perhaps test his boundaries.
As Sunil Borkar’s painterly camera, dressed up by Nithin Lukose’s evocative sound design, follows Dev before the jump, the heart skips a beat as Raam draws you into his canvas. Within the four walls of Dev’s heritage bungalow, there is a nurturing wife, Nandini (Priyanka Bose), who sings of Lord Shiva, the destroyer, a teenage daughter, Vanya (Hiral Sidhu), who is grappling with questions of sexuality and freedom, a precocious son, Juju, and two dogs. Together, they look for stars in the clear sky but miss the fireflies (the source of the Hindi title) in their garden that have been uprooted from their natural habitat because of pesticide use.
The poetry goes discordant when the cherry blossom trees in the estate start catching fire mysteriously. Doubts crop up in Dev’s mind as the fire engulfs large tracts of the estate. He feels the locals have challenged his authority. After the death of a worker, the local women allege a possible role of the pesticides. Dev’s devoted manager, Mohan (Deepak Dobriyal) and Keshav, the trusted leader of the workers, look for the clues, but Dev’s patience wanes. A vicious government official adds fuel to the fire.
Meanwhile, Keshav’s wife (Tillotama Shome) tells a bedtime story to her children about the fairies that descend from the ether to reclaim creatures of their ilk. As Dev’s fear behind the frown becomes apparent and he calls in the police to find the source of the fire, the cracks in the social contract surface, and the barriers of class and privilege unravel for the discerning. Do the lands truly belong to Dev? Like the cold fire of the uprooted fireflies heats the orchard in the realm of magic realism, the locals become agitated when they are put under suspicion. Raam doesn’t underline his intent; he whispers his point of view in the mountain air.
Shot in 16mm, the visuals work like weather-beaten memories stashed in a corner of the conscience that generate moments of guilt and introspection.
On the surface, it is told with a ‘once-upon-a-time’ flourish for an audience who don’t measure their cinematic experience in terms of slow or fast, parallel or crossover, the groggy voiceover conveys the tumult of the late 1980s when the old order gave way to the new, but 35 years later, the concerns remain the same. Vanya, the teenage daughter of Dev, gets hooked on one of the spiritual lamas roaming in the jungle. Curious to know the secrets of the jungle and his father’s wings, Vanya becomes a symbol of change. While Dev is busy looking at the bird’s-eye view of his property, the fire threatens to burn his courtyard. As the film progresses, Dev’s wings lose their magic, and the outsider/insider, the safe and the hazardous narrative, grips you.
Manoj relishes roles that are rooted in moral ambivalence. Here again, he is absolutely convincing as Dev, a seemingly mild-mannered man at the top of the social hierarchy. He doesn’t have to shout to command respect. When the mysterious fire rages in his territory, the fear of losing his wings of superiority starts appearing on his face and body language, a space tailor-made for Manoj. Priyanka and Deepak merge into the narrative, but as I said, they are all puppets in Raam’s play.
