Gondhal Trailer Out: India’s Oscar Entry Gets Seven-Language Global Release on November 13

The global trailer of Gondhal is out, and with it comes one of the most ambitious release plans ever announced for a Marathi film. Directed by Santosh Davakhar, the psychological thriller will release worldwide on November 13, 2026 in seven languages — Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and English — covering markets including India, the US, the UK, Europe, Australia, Dubai and Africa. The makers have described it as the first Marathi film to receive a seven-language global theatrical rollout.

Gondhal is India’s official submission for the 99th Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category, and the makers have said the film is being considered in multiple categories, although further details have not been specified. Davakhar previously won the Silver Peacock for Best Director at the 56th International Film Festival of India, where the festival jury described Gondhal as “like a Shakespearean fable set in a real world.”

Set against the cultural traditions of Maharashtra, the film follows newlyweds Suman and Anandrao, whose lives take an unsettling turn as personal desires, marital responsibilities and devotion begin to intersect. The trailer offers glimpses of the couple’s strained circumstances and a series of mysterious events that form the basis of the psychological thriller. The film stars Ishita Deshmukh, Kishor Kadam, Yogesh Sohani and Nishad Bhoir, and it is produced by Santosh Davakhar and Diksha Davakhar under Davakhar Films, with cinematography by Amalendu Chaudhary. The film opens with a 25-minute unbroken take, according to the makers.

Davakhar has framed the global release as a cultural mission as much as a commercial one. “Global perceptions of Indian cinema are often shaped by narratives of poverty and caste conflict — important realities, but not the complete expression of India,” he said. “Gondhal is not a film but generations of culture, people, traditions coming together. Getting the world to know about this tradition is something that makes me immensely happy.” He added that global platforms like the Academy Awards help filmmakers “bring forth the ethnicity of our very roots across continents.”

Here is the Filmverse take: a seven-language rollout for a Marathi psychological thriller is a gamble that only makes sense if you stop thinking of Gondhal as a regional film with subtitles and start thinking of it as an Oscar campaign with a theatrical arm. The Academy submission gives it a story that travels — critics and festival audiences abroad already have a reason to pay attention — and the trailer’s job is to prove the film is a thriller first and a cultural artefact second. If the 25-minute opening take works as promised, word of mouth will do what no dubbed version can: convince audiences that this is a film to experience, not a submission to admire. The risk, as ever with such rollouts, is spread too thin; but for a film built on a tradition most of the world has never seen, thin and wide may be exactly right.

Sources: Bollywood Hungama, Filmy Friday