Flying Tigers

Forum 2026

Spurred by her Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother’s strange evocation of home-invading tigers, filmmaker Madhusree Dutta travels to Assam, India. Here, she learns about the Flying Tigers: US aircraft that transferred military supplies during WWII across the perilous Himalayas, from Assam to Kunming in China. So begins a globetrotting, decades-spanning docufiction essay on the human-scale experience of monumental logistical phenomena, featuring small histories that unfold in the quiet shadows of History writ large. Teaming up with Kunming-born media theorist Mi You and Assam-based researcher Purav Goswami, Dutta contrasts the smooth international flow of goods today with increasing restrictions on people’s movement across borders. Her film reveals how lived realities of frontier populations have always been fluid and malleable, refusing the homogeneity demanded by cartographic political imagination. Appropriately, Dutta adopts a heterogeneous, genre-defying form, mixing interviews, archival material, performances, animation and musical numbers to craft a personal, wide-ranging work at once intimate and colossal.

Trailer/Film Excerpt

To view this content, you must enable third-party cookies. >

by Madhusree Dutta (Director, Screenplay)
with Madhusree Dutta, Mi You, Purav Goswami, Devika Hazarika Germany / India 2026 Bengali, English, Mandarin, German, Polish 105' Colour World premiere | Documentary form

With

Madhusree Dutta
Mi You
Purav Goswami
Devika Hazarika

Crew

Director	Madhusree Dutta
Screenplay	Madhusree Dutta
Cinematography	Riju Das, Isabelle Casez, Guligo Jia Yanan
Editing	Federico Neri
Music	Bo Wiget
Sound Design	Boby John
Production Design	Suresh BV
Animation	Nina Sabnani
Producers	Alexandra Gerbaulet, Merle Kröger
Executive Producer	Meike Martens
Co-Producer	Tarshia Dutta

Produced by

pong film

Berlin, Germany

Co-produced by

TCG Studios

Mumbai, India

World Sales

Visionär Films

Berlin, Germany

Madhusree Dutta

Madhusree Dutta is a filmmaker, author and cultural producer living in India and Germany. Her areas of interest are hybridity within public and urban culture as well as documentary and archival practices. She is the founder and former director (1998-2016) of Majlis, a centre for interdisciplinary arts initiatives in Mumbai and former artistic director (2018-2021) of the Academy of the Arts of the World (Akademie der Künste der Welt) in Cologne, Germany. With Flying Tigers, Madhusree Dutta returns to filmmaking after twenty years.

Filmography

1993 I Live in Behrampada 1995 Memories of Fear 1997 Sundari: An Actor Prepares; short film 2000 Scribbles on Akka 2002 Made in India 2005 From Here to Here; co-directed by Philip Scheffner 2006 Seven Islands and a Metro 2009 Cinema City Shorts; compilation 2026 Flying Tigers

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2026