The Film Heritage Foundation’s newly restored version of Pradip Krishen and Arundhati Roy’s cult film What Annie Gave Me (1989) will have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, marking a remarkable second life for a film that virtually disappeared after a single television run.
The restoration is an important milestone for the Film Heritage Foundation and marks the first time that one of its projects has been selected as a Berlinale Classic. Foundation director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who also serves on the festival’s international jury led by Wim Wenders, will introduce the 4K restored films along with director Pradip Krishen.
Booker Prize-winning author Roy (The God of Small Things), who wrote and starred in India’s National Film Award-winning campus comedy, withdrew from the festival after the jury refused to comment on Gaza. When asked about Roy’s withdrawal, Dungarpur made no comment.
An 18-month restoration process began after Krishen donated film materials to the Film Heritage Foundation in 2024, including 35mm release prints, digital audio, and original filming and dialogue scripts.
Set in an architecture school in Delhi in the mid-1970s, “In Where Annie Gives It That Ones” depicts student life through a lens rarely seen in Indian films at the time. English-speaking, Westernized youth communicate in their own dialects. The film aired once on India’s national broadcaster Doordarshan in 1989 before disappearing from circulation and becoming a cult favorite among those who tracked it down in degraded VHS copies and uploads to YouTube.
The title character, Anand Grover (nicknamed “Annie”), is a failed fifth-year architecture student who keeps chickens in his dorm room. The Delhi University slang term “give to the people” roughly translates to “do what you always do,” but in Annie’s case it means a blunder of good intentions and unrealistic idealism. His friends include Radha, a resourceful rebel played by Roy, her boyfriend Arjun, a student called Mankind, and Kasozi, a Ugandan who gnashes his teeth while dreaming of dictator Idi Amin. The students’ antagonist is Professor Y.D. Bilimoria, who is called Yamdoot after the messenger of the Hindu god of death.
The ensemble cast includes Roshan Seth, Arjun Raina, Rituraj, Isaac Thomas, and Divya Seth. The film also stars superstar Shah Rukh Khan in a senior role, marking his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it feature debut.
Shot with an intimate documentary quality and featuring clever wordplay, the film depicts the camaraderie and youthful energy of students as they navigate their way through college life. Beneath the humor and jokes lie deeper currents of anti-establishment sentiment and a desire for social change.
Restoration proved technically difficult. Working from 35mm release prints blown from the original 16mm negatives, conservators discovered puncture damage, tears, scratches, shrinkage, mold, and halos. Krishen helped the Film Heritage Foundation gain access to the original 16mm camera negative and sound negative from the National Film Archive of India. These elements required extensive manual restoration before being sent to the L’Imagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna for digital restoration and color grading.
“Color correction of the film took a long time because it was washed out in some sections,” Dungarpur told Variety. He worked closely with Krishen throughout the process to ensure color accuracy and preserve the film’s original grain, traveling to Bologna to oversee the final grading frame by frame.
“I was sharing scenes in progress with Pradip to make sure the colors were correct, to match the colors to how he originally shot the film, and to ensure the authenticity of the film’s grain,” Dungarpur explains.
Acoustic restoration was particularly challenging because optical elements introduce electrical noise, distortion, gaps, and dropouts. Considering the importance of language and dialogue in a film’s appeal, Krishen provided new subtitles for the restoration.
Dungarpur discovered the film’s significance while checking prints at the Film Heritage Foundation’s conservation lab. “I was struck by how contemporary the film looked 37 years after its solo screening on Doordarshan,” he says. “I felt that the slice-of-life approach to hostel life, the dialogue with the uniquely British patois, the anxieties, pressures, ambiguities, camaraderie and small-scale rebellions faced by young students would still resonate with audiences today. I felt that this brash, irreverent film deserved its moment in the sun after decades in the shadows.”
For Dungarpur, who is also Festival Director of MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, the Berlinale is an opportunity to take on multiple roles at one of the most prestigious events in the film world. “It’s exciting in a way to come to the Berlinale wearing so many hats, as it gives us a truly comprehensive view of contemporary emerging talent to classic works in one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world,” he says.
Dungarpur established the Film Heritage Foundation in 2014 as India’s only non-governmental organization dedicated to film preservation. His documentary work includes The Celluloid Man (2012), which won two National Film Awards, and the seven-hour Czechmate – In Search of Jiri Menzel (2020), which was named one of the British Film Institute’s top five films of the year. In 2025, he received the Vittorio Boarini Award for outstanding contribution to the preservation of cinema as a cultural heritage.
An international jury led by Wenders will select the Golden Bear and Silver Bear winners from among the 20 films in competition at the festival, which will be held until February 22nd.
The restoration premiere will proceed with Krishen and Dungarpur introducing the film. In Where Annie Gives It That Ones has cinematography by Rajesh Joshi, editing by A. Thiagaraju, and production design by Roy himself. The film was restored in 4K at the L’Imagine Ritrovata laboratory with funding from the Film Heritage Foundation.
