India, Sept. 16 -- A cademy Award-nominated filmmaker Shaunak Sen's fiction debut Termite had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 11 as part of its Short Cuts Programme. "Not long after the Oscars [following All That Breathes' nominations, 2023], I got a diagnosis of kidney cancer. Obviously that kind of completely gobsmacks you and my way of coping with it was to start filming everything that was happening with me also shooting this one team of surgeons whose work I was very interested in," says Sen, recalling how Termite, starring Faisal Malik and Valavane Koumarane as termite exterminators in Delhi, began to take shape. Around the same time, two of his friends got married. "I was happy for them but alongside I had this strange feeling that my life was kind of static while everyone else is moving ahead. That made me think a lot about male friendships, but also about urban male loneliness." That led him to termites as a metaphor for "an invisible emotional entropy". Delhi remains central too. "Being a Delhite, almost all my projects are set in the Capital," he says. Sen, whose All That Breathes won at Sundance, screened at Cannes and earned Oscar and BAFTA nominations, is also eyeing an awards run for Termite: "We will try a campaign for Oscars but whether it's this year or next year is not sure."...