Mukkabaaz, Omerta premiere at Toronto International Film Festival

It was a busy day for Indian films at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as Anurag Kashyap’s Mukkabaaz and Hansal Mehta’s Omerta both had their world premieres last night, 11 September.

The cast and directors showed up to present the film to the international audiences.

Mukkabaaz, which is based on a true story, stars Vineet Kumar Singh and Zoya Hussain.

According to the festival website, Singh, plays a boxer, Shravan, who comes from the lower-caste. He delivers a nasty punch Bhagwan's face — his employer, the local kingpin, and the top boxing promoter in the region. Following this episode, Bhagwan puts in all his forces to stop Shravan from ascending up the ranks of the championship, while also preventing Shravan from pursuing the high caste woman, Sunaina, he has fallen in love with.

Singh shared a photo of Anurag Kashyap with him and actress Zoya Hussain, who plays Sunaina.

Mukkabaaz, known as The Brawler at TIFF, is already getting favourable reviews from those who have seen the film. The film will have its Asian premiere at the 19th Mumbai Film Festival (12 to 18 October) ahead of its theatrical release on 10 November.

Singh, who trained rigorously to get in shape for the role, also tweeted his congratulations to the Omerta crew — National award-winning director Hansal Mehta and actor Rajkummar Rao.

Toronto audiences lined up for the highly anticipated Omerta. The film is based on the life of the British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was sentenced to death for abducting and murdering Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl.

Meanwhile, Mehta has a busy week ahead of him. He also has Simran, starring Kangana Ranaut, due to be released in India on Friday, 15 September. He tweeted about the “overwhelming experience” to have both films out at the same time and said it was due to “a lot of love, passion, resources and hard work from the teams of #Simran and #Omertà”.

But the director says that Omerta is a film dear to him. Owing to the controversial subject of the film, the director was greeted with a full house at TIFF. “It's important to confront uneasy truths. They may make us angry but we still have to confront them,” he said.

Another Indian film, Village Rockstars, directed by Rima Das, also premiered with positive reviews at Toronto last week. Shot in Assam, Village Rockstar is Das’s second film. It is about a young girl Dhunu who yearns to form a rock band and eventually own a guitar.

Village Rockstars also recieved a lot of appreciation from the audiences.