India’s Oscar Entry Gondhal Opens Dallas Film Utsav in Texas Next Week: Dates, Films and Tickets

Indian cinema takes over North Texas next week. The INDICA Dallas Film Utsav runs from Friday, November 13, to Sunday, November 15, 2026, at Galaxy Theatres Grandscape in The Colony, Texas, presented by the Center for Indic Films, an initiative of INDICA. The three-day festival celebrates Indian storytelling across features, documentaries and shorts, with filmmaker Q&As, a short-film contest finale and a screenwriting workshop.

The opening night is the headline. The festival opens on Friday, November 13, with a red carpet at 5:00 p.m., followed by Gondhal at 6:30 p.m. and a Q&A with its director, Santosh Davakhar. Gondhal, a Marathi film, is India’s official entry to the 99th Academy Awards — a rare chance for diaspora audiences to see the country’s Oscar submission on the big screen, with its director in the room, before the Academy’s shortlists are decided.

Saturday, November 14, is the busiest day. The CineSparks Ultrashort Film Contest Grand Finale runs from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., with screenings from the Swipe Right anthology and the winners announced. The features are Kangbo Aloti (Indo-Burmese Karbi) at 3:00 p.m., Vimuk (Braj Bhasha) at 5:30 p.m. and Khoya Paya (Hindi) at 8:30 p.m., alongside two shorts programmes spanning Hindi, Marwari and other languages.

Sunday, November 15, closes the festival with documentaries in the afternoon — including Avadhanam: The Art of Attention in Telugu — and a second shorts programme at 3:30 p.m., before a showcase screening of The India Experience: Season 1, followed by a Q&A with Bharat Bala of the Virtual Bharat 1000 Film project. The festival closes with Om ka Hari, the Hindi film directed by Harish Vyas, at 8:00 p.m., with a Q&A with its lead actors. Screenwriters get their own track: a Writers’ Room Workshop on Thursday, November 12, 6:00–9:00 p.m. at the Caddo Offices in Frisco, and a collaborative-screenwriting panel on Sunday, 11:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m. Festival details and tickets are at DallasFilmUtsav.org.

Here is the Filmverse take: what makes Dallas worth the trip is the combination — an Oscar-entry opening night, a genuinely multilingual slate running from Karbi to Marwari to Telugu, and filmmakers present for Q&As rather than films shipped in alone. Texas has one of the largest Indian communities in the United States, and a festival programmed like this in a mainstream multiplex is how diaspora cinema stops being a niche booking and becomes a weekend out. If you go for one screening, make it Gondhal on Friday night: India’s Oscar entries rarely play Texas with their director in attendance.

Sources: NRI2NRI, INDICA / Center for Indic Films — dates, venue and programme as published; confirm with organisers before travelling.