Nawazuddin Siddiqui to Headline Old Delhi Film Kabootar

Nawazuddin Siddiqui will star in Kabootar, the feature debut of director Ishan Sharma, as a street detective in Old Delhi. The Press Trust of India reported the casting on Oct. 18, citing a press release from the producers. The film is an India-France-Norway co-production.

What the release says

According to the PTI report in The Times of India, Kabootar is produced by Nikhil Chaudhary of MDC Filmworks. The co-producers are Haiku Films in France and Rein Film in Norway, with Rohit Saxena as co-producer on the Indian side.

The story is set against the crumbling architecture of Old Delhi. Siddiqui plays Mehboob, a street detective who secretly reads letters written to a Djinn to find prospective clients. His path crosses with Naoko, a Japanese tourist carrying the weight of a painful past, and Ruby, a young child searching for his parents. The release says the film brings together eccentricity, emotional depth and the contradictions of human experience.

What the producer said

Chaudhary called Siddiqui an actor of extraordinary range. He said, "He can be dangerous in 'Gangs of Wasseypur' and heartbreakingly gentle in 'The Lunchbox.' He's also one of the few Indian actors with a real international presence. His films have gone to Cannes multiple times, and he has been nominated for an International Emmy."

Chaudhary also said the actor knows Delhi well. In his words, the film is "a love letter to the city," and the team needed an actor who could "understand it, feel it and embody it." These are the producer's statements in a press release, so they work as promotion and not as independent assessment.

Why the co-production angle matters

A three-country structure matters for how a film is financed and where it can travel. The release itself says the arrangement is important for taking Kabootar to audiences around the world. It does not give a budget, a shooting schedule or a release date, so how far the film will travel is open.

For Siddiqui, the role is described as a character who explores a new facet of his craft. That too is the release's wording. His credits named in the release, Gangs of Wasseypur and The Lunchbox, are well documented, and the Cannes and International Emmy references come from the producer's statement.

A debut worth tracking

First features by new directors often decide how a film circulates on the festival route, and the pairing of a first-time director with a well-known lead is a common way to secure attention. Nothing in the coverage says where or when Kabootar will be shown.

What we could not confirm

We could not confirm a start date for filming, the shooting locations beyond Old Delhi, the cast beyond Siddiqui or any release plan. We could not independently verify the producer's claims about the actor's Cannes presence or his Emmy nomination, though we are attributing them to Chaudhary. The Times of India report is a PTI piece based on a press release, and we did not find a second outlet with independent reporting. Ishan Sharma had not been quoted in the version we read.

Sources

*Cover photo: Shagil Kannur, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nawazuddin_Siddiqui_at_IFFK_2021_4_%28cropped%29.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nawazuddin_Siddiqui_at_IFFK_2021_4_%28cropped%29.jpg)* (CC BY-SA 4.0).*