‘Faaraaz,’ ‘Bheed’ will be distributed worldwide by Reliance Entertainment.

India’s Reliance Entertainment, the producer of Steven Spielberg’s “The Fablemen”, has tied up with T-Series and Anubhav Sinha’s Benares Mediaworks to distribute Sudhir Mishra’s “Afwah”, Sinha’s “Bheed” and Hansal Mehta’s “Faraj” internationally.

Jahan Kapoor, Aditya Rawal, Juhi Babbar Soni’s debut is Mehta’s hostage drama “Faraz”, which releases on 3 February. The film, which had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, opened overnight and is based on a July 2016 incident in which armed gunmen held customers, 20 of them, and two bakery workers hostage for 12 hours at the Holy Artisan Bakery in Dhaka, Bangladesh. before killing

Bangladeshi writer Mustafa Sarayar Faruqi’s “Shanibaar Bickel”, based on the same incident, recently received clearance for release after a four-year battle with the Bangladesh Film Censor Board.

Next up is Sudhir Mishra’s thriller “Afwah”, starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Bhumi Pednekar, Sumit Vyas and Sharib Hashmi. The release date is being finalised. Mishra recently directed “Tanaav”, the Indian adaptation of “Fauda”.

Anubhav Sinha’s “Bheed”, starring Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Kapoor, Bhumi Pednekar, Ashutosh Rana and Dia Mirza, is set to release on March 24. The socio-political drama sheds light on the social inequalities that India faced during its difficult times.

In recent years Benares has made a mark with hits including “Mulk” (2018), “Article 15” (2019) and “Article 15” (2019) based on burning social themes in India including religious bias, caste discrimination and domestic violence. Thappad” (2020).

Anubhav Sinha, founder and MD, Benares Mediaworks, said the association with Reliance Entertainment gives the company “an opportunity to ensure the messaging across all our films reaches a larger and more diverse audience.”

Bhushan Kumar, Chair and MD, T-Series added, “T-Series is moving fast to make Indian entertainment available to a global audience. There is much more to come, and I hope we continue to strive for greater heights in the coming years.”

Dhruv Sinha, Head, Overseas Business, Reliance Entertainment, said: “We will use specific focused release strategy that caters to content specific, Benares produced films. It is the need of the hour with changing audience tastes and we recognize it. Additionally, this collaboration will not only give us the opportunity to strengthen our existing partnership with T-Series and Banaras, but also expand to other independent filmmakers and production houses to exploit their films to their full distribution potential.”