Nawazuddin Siddiqui to Lead 'Kabootar' for Director Ishan Sharma

Nawazuddin Siddiqui is attached to star in Kabootar, the debut feature of writer-director Ishan Sharma, with principal photography scheduled to begin in Delhi in early 2027, according to Variety.

Siddiqui plays Mehboob, a street detective in Old Delhi. The story also involves Naoko, a Japanese tourist, and Ruby, a young child searching for his parents.

Kabootar is produced by Nikhil Chaudhary of MDC Filmworks and is a co-production between MDC Filmworks in India, Haiku Films in France and Rein Film in Norway, with Rohit Saxena as co-producer on the Indian side. The project was curated by CineV, Nina Lath Gupta's platform connecting projects with financiers and investors.

The film has been selected for Tasveer Film Market in Seattle, Film Bazaar in Goa and the NFDC lineup at this year's European Film Market in Berlin. Chaudhary will pitch Kabootar in the APN+ Track of the Asian Producers Network in Singapore later this month.

Sharma developed the script through the Workshop at the Festival des 3 Continents in Nantes, formerly the Produire au Sud Workshop. He is a graduate of the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, and his short films The God of Panic Street (2019) and A Season of Mangoes (2022) played international festivals and won several awards, including the Cinema Experimenta Award.

MDC Filmworks has previously produced five films, among them Sanjoy Nag's Yours Truly, which premiered at Busan, and Rajat Kapoor's Kadakh, which premiered at Tallinn Black Nights and won best screenplay. Haiku Films produced Fi (Grand Prize, San Sebastián 2022) and co-produced Treasure (Berlinale 2024), while Rein Film is known for My Fathers' Daughter (Toronto 2024).