Screen industries take centre stage during UK prime minister’s India visit

Today UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer led a delegation of industry leaders to visit Yash Raj Studios, Mumbai during a trade visit to India this week which has seen the screen industries recognised as one of the key opportunity sectors for closer UK/India collaboration and growth.

Building on both the UK trade visit to India in May this year with UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and the UK/India Free Trade Agreement signed in July 2025, this trip, attended by BFI Governors Monica Chadha and Andrew Smith, marks a significant step forward as a new MOU is agreed between the BFI and its Indian equivalent the NFDC (National Film Development Corporation). 

The MOU will establish a framework of close cooperation across film and broader screen to boost co-production, greater access for audiences, cultural exchange and support for film heritage. The BFI was recently selected to receive an award at the UK-India Awards 2025 for its exceptional role in advancing UK-India cultural and cinematic collaboration. 

India has one of the fastest growing screen industries in the world across film, television and gaming. It is the second largest source of inward investment in the UK, totaling 7% of our inward investment film production spend over the last decade, creating thousands of jobs and contributing £118m a year to the UK economy. The UK Prime Minister announced in Mumbai today that three new Bollywood blockbusters from Yash Raj Film, India’s leading film production and distribution company, will be made in locations across the UK from early 2026, creating over 3,000 jobs and boosting the economy by millions of pounds.     

“Bollywood is back in Britain, and it’s bringing jobs, investment and opportunity, all while showcasing the UK as a world-class destination for global filmmaking,” said UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “This is exactly the kind of partnership our trade deal with India is destined to unlock – driving growth, strengthening cultural ties and delivering for communities across the country.”  

UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “When I visited India in May, I was struck not only by the strength of our shared creative heritage, but by the extraordinary potential for what we can build together. This landmark agreement between the BFI and India’s National Film Development Corporation marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter in UK-India cultural collaboration. From co-productions and film festivals to skills exchanges and shared stories, this partnership will open new opportunities for filmmakers and bring our world-class storytelling to fresh and diverse audiences in both countries.” 

BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts said: “The UK and India are two great film making and film loving nations with deep cultural ties and this trip fuels an exciting new future together. Our respective Governments recognise that our screen industries working closer unlocks opportunities to strengthen cultural diversity, support industry growth and expand audience engagement — and our new MOU is designed to help make this happen.We welcome more production from India to the UK to build further collaboration and co-production between our nations for us all to benefit economically and culturally.”   

Representing the UK’s screen sector on the trip were Monica Chadha, BFI Governor, Gurinder Chadha filmmaker and founder of Bend It Networks, Andrew Smith, BFI Governor and Corporate Affairs Director Pinewood Studios, Adrian Wootton, CEO British Film Commission, Rebecca Hawkes, Acting Head of Studios, Elstree Studios and Namrata Sharma, Director of Impact and Partnerships, Civic Studios. The delegation comprises of 120 industry figures representing companies from across a number of sectors. 

While Bollywood dominates production and box office in India, there is an exciting new independent film industry emerging which has included a number of collaborations with the BFI. Sister Midnight (Karan Khandari) and the upcoming Untitled Shalini Adnani film are both supported by the BFI Filmmaking Fund and Sister Midnight was also supported by the UK Global Screen Fund, with funding for international distribution. All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia) was distributed in the UK by the BFI and won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024. The BFI London Film Festival, which opens today, features Anuparna Roy’s Songs of Forgotten Trees and the Archive Special Presentation of Sholay, Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 classic. 

The BFI and NFDC have been actively collaborating since 2021: from BFI presence at India Film Bazaar in 2022 to the National Lottery-funded delegation of UK producers attending this event in Goa in 2023, to UK-India co-production meetings organised at the Cannes film festival and the Co-production Forum at the UK Asian Film Festival.  The forthcoming MOU is formalising and providing a strategic direction to this work.   

In 2017 the BFI celebrated a Year of Indian Cinema to mark the UK-India Year of Culture and the 70th anniversary of Indian independence and Partition. As part of this celebration, the BFI showcased a collection of films from the BFI National Archive, including “India on Film: 1899-1947”, a collection of over 200 films documenting life in India before independence and made available for free on BFI Player. 

The celebration included a BFI National Archive restoration of the 1928 classic Shiraz, an epic silent feature by Franz Osten and based on the world’s most beautiful monument to love: the Taj Mahal. After its premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, Shiraz toured 4 major cities in India and was seen by thousands of people. The celebration that year also included BFI Distribution’s UK wide release of Hotel Salvation, directed by Shubhashish Bhutiani. 

The BFI programmed a complete retrospective of one of the greats of Indian cinema director Satyajit Ray, a BFI Fellow, in 2022 at BFI Southbank. BFI Southbank has hosted the London Indian Film Festival since 2017 and has supported the UK Asian Film Festival, the longest-running South Asian film festival in the UK, for 27 years, presented by Tongues on Fire and supported by the BFI Audience Projects Fund.