TITLI World Cinema

Possessing the ability to give escalating dramatic conflict an unaffected realism and honesty, director-screenwriter Kanu Behl infuses his first feature with the kind of character-driven specificity found in many international breakout films. Shot in Super 16 and starring a gifted newcomer (Shashank Arora), this layered crime drama churns into a bittersweet, intricate coming-of-age tale. In TITLI, the young eponymous protagonist,whose name means “butterfly,” risks everything to fly away free from a life of abject poverty and intergenerational crime. He soon discovers that hard life lessons are not to be learned in the hallowed halls of school, but rather within the jagged boundary lines of his slum.