Final Rating: 4/5
An aging village chief in the eastern Indian state of Nagaland fights to preserve his culture while an American missionary converts his peers to Christianity in Theja Rio’s feature debut Angh.
Anghlong Konyak portrays Anghba, the “Old Chief” of a Naga village deep in the jungle. Along with his son, Amao (Sobino Rengma), Anghba is the last inhabitant of his village, ruling over a group of empty shacks from his grander, but only barely less empty shack.
However, Anghba’s isolation is at least partially by choice: the villagers who once lived alongside him have moved to a new settlement nearby and now spend their time learning about Baptism from an American missionary (Douglas James Henschell). They wear western clothes, claim ownership over what were once communal orchards, and speak English, occasionally dropping in on Anghba to ask that he join them. An offer he repeatedly firmly refuses, as his patience wanes.
Angh’s story is framed by a parable about a rubber tree. During a vicious storm, rubber asked a large tree permission to take refuge under its leaves. The tree obliged, but the rubber refused to move afterwards. Though initially thinking nothing of it, the tree was shocked the next day to discover that the rubber had crushed the tree’s roots, supplanting it and starving it of nutrients.
Anghba is at the end of a similar process. He sheltered the pastor upon his arrival, only for the visitor to convert his village to a new religion, language, and culture. In the blink of an eye, the old ways and even the village itself were abandoned. When he looks upon the new village, Anghba sees people content to submit to a god who is alien to them.
People are inspired to imitate a foreign pastor and spread to new places as if eager to escape their origins. At one point, Anghba is surprised to encounter a group of former villagers building a road from a colossal pile of felled trees. When he asks the group if any of the elders were consulted – since he certainly wasn’t – he’s informed that “the words of elders don’t mean anything these days.”
Christianity in Nagaland spread rapidly after the 1960s, leading to it becoming India’s most Christian populated state in modern day. Angh depicts cultural genocide in the earliest days of that process. Anghba’s biggest roadblocks to survival come from the people around him changing their habits.
He can no longer get mangoes from the orchard, because former villagers have decided they own it now, rather than sharing it as they always had. Villagers’ deforestation efforts drive away animals, making meat a luxury. Illnesses are more deadly since the medicine men have all converted to Christianity. And by clinging to his customs, the distance between Anghba and his son grows. Why should the two of them live a rugged, difficult life while everyone is having the time of their lives in the new village?
Anghba is repeatedly assured by villagers that they have not forgotten their culture. Director Rio confronts this idea several times, as villagers visit their Old Chief and ask to take part in various rituals. One man returns to ask advice from the skull of his father. Another, having grown disillusioned with Christianity, asks to return to the village, and when denied goes into self-exile in the jungle.
In each case, however, the villagers betray their own ignorance. The first man finds the wrong skull. The second dies from eating mushrooms he should have known would kill him.
Angh is a harrowing depiction of cultural collapse. Most damningly, director Rio shows both the church as the perpetrator, and the Naga victims as participants in their own undoing. In the climactic scene, it’s not the pastor who stands against Anghba and tells him to give in, it’s Anghba’s own people.
Angh was seen during the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. Thank you to Route504 for the screener.
