Spirit of the Wildflower “In a forgotten forest, two voices refuse to be silenced.” Om Singh makes his production debut with Spirit of the W...
Spirit of the Wildflower “In a forgotten forest,
two voices refuse to be silenced.” Om Singh makes his production debut with
Spirit of the Wildflower — a powerful documentary on identity, survival, and
India’s first-ever trans masculine story from a rural tribal community, headed
to Cannes 2026. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Cannes, May 2026: Some stories entertain.
Some stay with you. And some quietly change the way we look at the world.
Spirit of the Wildflower is one such film. Set in Kathiwada, Madhya Pradesh, the
documentary follows two tribal siblings running India’s first legal mahua
distillery, while one of them dreams of transitioning and living openly as a
man. Deeply personal and rooted in lived reality, the film brings to screen a
voice that has never truly been seen or heard in Indian cinema before a trans
masculine journey from within a rural Adivasi community. The film will be
presented at the Cannes Film Festival 2026, marking a significant moment for
independent Indian storytelling on the global stage. Directed by filmmaker
Shrimoyee Chakraborty in her feature debut, Spirit of the Wildflower is also
the production debut of Om Singh, Co-Founder of Adyah Music and Dot Media, who
came on board as the project’s earliest supporter. Known for building talent-led
platforms like Onze Talent and Dot Talents, Singh has long backed stories
rooted in culture and identity, making this film a natural extension of that
vision. Later, the project also found support from business leader Radhika
Piramal, Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Neeraj Churi, and LGBTQ+ advocate
Keshav Suri, who joined as Executive Producers. Speaking about the film, Om
Singh said, “The moment I heard this story, I knew it needed to be told. Not
because it was trying to make noise, but because of how honest and untouched it
felt. We speak so much about representation today, but there are still entire
communities and experiences that have never made it to screen. For me, backing
this film was about creating space for a voice that deserved to exist in
cinema, exactly as it is.” Director Shrimoyee Chakraborty added, “This film was
never about making a statement from the outside. It was about listening,
spending time with people, and understanding their silences, resilience, and
everyday negotiations with identity and survival. I also consciously wanted to
move away from the way rural India is often presented in documentaries globally
— through a poverty-porn lens. This film does not look at its subjects with
pity or spectacle. If anything, it looks at them with awe. These women are
incredibly resilient, powerful, and self-assured, and it was important for me
to portray them through that lens of strength and dignity. Spirit of the
Wildflower is deeply personal to me, and bringing it to Cannes feels incredibly
emotional.” At a time when conversations around gender and identity are slowly
finding space in mainstream culture, Spirit of the Wildflower stands apart for
where it comes from — the margins. It is intimate, rooted, and unapologetically
real. The film was presented at Cannes from May 16–21, 2026. Tabernacle Street
Films, Adyah Films, and Featuristic Films are currently open to meetings with
international sales agents, distributors, streaming platforms, and acquisition
executives. The film is available for acquisition across all territories.
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