Cannes 2026: Om Singh’s Spirit Of The Wildflower Heads To Cannes With India’s First Trans Masculine Story

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.