Maithili cinema is small but spirited. It opened with Kanyadaan (released 1971, from Harimohan Jha’s novel), and for decades survived on a handful of films and a shrinking circuit of theatres. Its breakthrough came with Mithila Makhaan (2016), produced by Neetu and Nitin Chandra, the first Maithili film to win a National Film Award.
A new generation has since drawn festival acclaim — above all Achal Mishra’s quietly luminous Gamak Ghar (2019), which chronicles two decades of a family home in a Darbhanga village and has been compared to the work of Ozu. Despite chronic problems of distribution, Maithili cinema today is a serious, searching body of work about the life of the Maithili-speaking world.