"I Sold My Car and My Flat to Make This Film": Eight Years On, India Waits for Tumbbad 2

Sohum Shah has revisited a story he has told before but which lands differently with each retelling: he sold his car and his flat to help finance Tumbbad, after people around him warned that no one would watch it. Eight years on, the film is a certified cult classic, and India is waiting on Tumbbad 2.

The original's slow-burn journey is now trade folklore: a modest theatrical run in 2018 that found its real audience later, through festival play and streaming, until its rain-soaked folk-horror visuals and Hastar mythology became shorthand for a kind of Indian genre filmmaking the industry rarely attempts.

A sequel to a film whose value was built entirely on scarcity and word of mouth carries its own risk: the thing that made Tumbbad special was that almost nobody expected it to work. Tumbbad 2 does not get to be a surprise.