More than 900 industry delegates, 275-plus curated business meetings and new film and AI ventures put a sharper commercial focus on India’s latest attempt to build cross-border creative partnerships.
The two-day BRICS WAVES Bazaar 2026, which concluded in Mumbai on August 7, brought together representatives from 20 BRICS member and partner countries for discussions spanning film, television, animation, VFX, gaming, media and digital content.
The event comes as India’s media and entertainment industry is already becoming more digital and internationally connected. The sector reached ₹2.78 trillion in 2025, growing 9% over the previous year, according to the FICCI-EY Media & Entertainment Report 2026.
Cross-Border Film Deals
The most tangible outcomes from the Bazaar were international collaborations rather than broad declarations of intent.
The National Film Development Corporation exchanged a Letter of Intent with Brazil’s RioFilme to strengthen audiovisual cooperation and facilitate Brazilian participation in WAVES 2027. The agreement gives the India-Brazil relationship a concrete film-industry component, potentially creating a pathway for greater participation in India’s wider media marketplace.
The event also brought together producers from India, Brazil, Portugal and France, who announced the feature film Portuguese Man ‘O War. Separately, the India-Russia co-production KOROVA was officially unveiled.
These projects show how the Bazaar is being positioned not simply as a showcase for finished content, but as a platform for projects involving multiple markets.
Another collaboration involved the National Film Archive of India and Russia’s Gosfilmofond, which announced continued cooperation to explore formal collaboration in film archiving and preservation.
AI Enters The Film Business
The clearest technology-focused announcement came from South Korea’s nCORE Inc. and UAE-based VisionX, which announced the launch of Calivision AI Studio in India to develop AI-driven cinematic and immersive storytelling.
That development is significant because AI is moving from being discussed primarily as a production tool to becoming part of the commercial infrastructure around content creation.
India’s broader media economy provides the backdrop. Digital media crossed ₹1 trillion in revenue in 2025 and became the industry’s largest segment. Digital advertising alone grew 26% to ₹947 billion, accounting for 63% of total advertising revenue.
For companies entering AI-enabled filmmaking, that growing digital ecosystem offers a sizeable domestic market alongside opportunities to develop content and technology for international audiences.
Marketplace Beyond Cinema
The Bazaar was broader than film and AI. The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies signed an MoU with Graphiti Multimedia for collaboration on content creation, industry partnerships, academic programmes and talent development.
The event also saw the announcement of the BRICS Independent Producers Alliance, designed as an international platform connecting producers across BRICS countries through investment, education, innovation and collaborative projects.
In animation and gaming, the Bazaar featured the launch of the micro-drama platform KLIP, an upcoming Indian anime television series from ETV and Vaibhavi Studios’ anime feature TRIO. The Assam AVGC-XR Development Association also signed agreements with industry bodies covering game development, comics, intellectual property distribution and international market access.
The range of announcements reflects a broader shift in how India is approaching its creative economy. Film remains central, but the commercial opportunity increasingly sits at the intersection of content, technology, intellectual property and global distribution.
India’s M&E Opportunity
The scale of the domestic industry makes that strategy commercially relevant. FICCI-EY estimates that India’s M&E sector will reach ₹3.3 trillion by 2028. Digital media, live events, filmed entertainment, and animation and VFX are expected to be among the key growth drivers.
But the significance of BRICS WAVES Bazaar will ultimately depend on what happens after the event. The 275-plus B2B meetings are a useful activity metric, but partnerships become economically meaningful only when they translate into financed productions, distribution arrangements, technology deployment, intellectual-property creation or sustained market access.
For India, that is the more important test. A successful creative marketplace cannot rely only on attracting international delegates to Mumbai. It needs to make India a place where international producers can find partners, projects can secure financing, technology companies can build new products and Indian intellectual property can travel into overseas markets.
The first BRICS WAVES Bazaar has produced a measurable pipeline of partnerships across film, archiving, AI, animation and gaming. Whether that pipeline develops into a durable cross-border creative economy will depend on how many of these announcements move from the conference room to actual production and distribution.
Also Read: Dabur Gets Relief From FSSAI Order Over ‘100%’ Claims As Delhi High Court Steps In
