PHOOLAN (TIFF 2026) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin
Newcomer Sneha Kumari is fiery and magnetic as teenage Robin Hood-style outlaw Phoolan Devi in Phoolan, a biographical drama focusing on forty-eight hours where the future Indian politician and two colleagues struggled to evade capture during the siege of a tiny village.
Inspired by Devi’s 1996 autobiography, Phoolan fills in the early years of India’s “Bandit Queen,” who in the film takes on a leadership role in an armed gang that initially kidnaps her. Having learned to shoot, she attacks rapists and brutal landowners, returning deeds for property to the lower castes, who cheer her for her mercy. (Produced in part by Amazon MGM Studios, the film includes a lengthy disclaimer stating that its views do not support any particular caste.)
Premiering at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, the film opens as seventeen-year-old Devi hides her hair under a turban, scurrying with two colleagues away from police trying to flush them out of hiding. She’s wanted for killing at least twenty men, and police tell thousands of officers descending on a small village about her. Her gang is agile, like dragonflies, they say. She’s seven feet tall. She’ll castrate you before killing you. (That much, at least, is true.)
Director Richie Mehta (Poacher), who cowrote the script with Anu Singh (Delhi Crime), uses moments of Devi hiding and resting to reveal flashbacks surrounding her rise to power. Phoolan depicts this as an accidental journey for the angry Devi, bossed around for being of a lower caste and often abused. Quick with her fists and her voice whenever someone strikes her mother or beats her and her family, she draws the ire of a local patriarch who considers her a troublemaker and pays bandits to snatch her.
The script gives Kumari a lot of expository dialogue at times, explaining how she was married at age eleven and frequently raped, both by her husband, then other villagers and police. But Kumari conveys this with the barest detachment, as if her calm affect hides unimaginable rage. What abuse can anyone frighten her with when she’s endured so much already?
The flashback style makes it difficult to follow Devi’s overall growth into a leader. However, the setup is suspenseful, as Devi puzzles out new places to hide, evades a helicopter dropping grenades, scrounges for water, and tricks the cops into friendly-fire shootouts. Her two male colleagues defer to her strategy and intelligence with an implied respect beyond her years.
A constable who expresses compassion for her and disgust toward the other cops who steal the villagers’ valuables adds additional depth, with one supervisor angrily questioning his caste and his loyalty. Meanwhile, villagers who had been protective of Devi start to lose patience as the police keep them from their homes and food, heightening the overall tension.
Given its narrow scope, Phoolan isn’t as fully dimensional a biopic as its real-life inspiration perhaps deserves. The end titles reveal that Devi later served time in prison, then became a member of parliament, and died at age 37 in 2001 upon being assassinated. “A woman’s wealth is her dignity,” the real Devi says in archive footage at the film’s end, explaining her advocacy for women and the poor.
That said, it’s an effective contained thriller that serves as an intriguing introduction to a fascinating woman.
