Archive · 3 Oct 2026
Shalini Adnani’s Our Share of Sand Competes at BFI London Film Festival
Shalini Adnani made a film called Our Share of Sand.
It will compete in a first-feature award category at the BFI London Film Festival.
The story follows a child and is inspired by Adnani’s childhood visits to India.
It looks at family, unfair differences between people, child labour and the effects of illegal sand mining.
Maya Mehta plays the main character, and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub and Ellora Torchia play her parents.
Adnani says the film shows how people from different cultures may see the same place differently.
She also wanted to show how children begin deciding what they think is right and wrong.
Her own connection to India has been shaped by growing up in Chile in a Sindhi family and hearing stories of displacement.
Chilean-Indian writer-director Shalini Adnani’s feature Our Share of Sand will compete for the BFI London Film Festival’s Sutherland Award for First Feature.
The UK-India-Greece co-production was filmed in Mahabaleshwar and Jambhali villages in Maharashtra.
The coming-of-age drama draws on Adnani’s childhood summer holidays in India and explores family loyalty, class inequality, child labour and illegal sand mining’s environmental hazards.
Child actor Maya Mehta stars as the protagonist; Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub and Ellora Torchia play her parents.
Adnani said the film examines cultural perspective and a child’s developing ideas of right and wrong, shaped in part by her own experience of displacement and Indian heritage.
- Who
- Writer-director Shalini Adnani; the film stars Maya Mehta, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub and Ellora Torchia.
- What
- Our Share of Sand will compete in the Sutherland Award for First Feature category.
- When
- At the upcoming BFI London Film Festival, which the article says is set to start the following week.
- Where
- The BFI London Film Festival; the film was shot in Mahabaleshwar and Jambhali villages in Maharashtra.
- Why
- The film explores family loyalty, class inequality, child labour, illegal sand mining and the perspectives shaped by culture and a child’s moral development.
- Film
- Our Share of Sand
- Writer-director
- Shalini Adnani
- Festival category
- Sutherland Award for First Feature
- Production
- UK-India-Greece co-production
- Filming locations
- Mahabaleshwar and Jambhali villages in Maharashtra
- Lead actor
- Maya Mehta
- Other cast
- Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub and Ellora Torchia