Swambhu Media Network Presents

Hanuman Ansh

A bhakti-led cinematic journey inspired by the life of Sri Neem Karoli Baba. A spiritual story for a young, global generation. In Hindi. Releasing worldwide on 7 August 2026.

The story

A young seeker who became a saint

Hanuman Ansh follows a young seeker who set out in search of Lord Ram and, through faith and seva, became Neem Karoli Baba, the barefoot saint whose message of kindness, service and presence quietly reached people across the world. It is not a biopic and it is not a lecture. It is a spiritual journey, told cinematically, that does not try to teach you spirituality so much as let you feel it.

The film treats devotion as something living rather than something historical. Its emotional centre is bhakti, the path of love and surrender, and the way an ordinary life, given fully to service, can become luminous. The story moves the way faith actually moves in a person, not in a single dramatic moment but in a slow, accumulating warmth.

Feature film · 2026Language: HindiGenre: Spiritual dramaInspired by Sri Neem Karoli Baba

Sri Neem Karoli Baba, Maharaj-ji, seated in the hills

The saint at the centre

Neem Karoli Baba, the barefoot saint

He was born in a village in Uttar Pradesh in the early years of the last century, left home while still a young man, and wandered the northern plains as a sadhu. Town after town gave him a different name. To the world he became simply Maharaj-ji.

Above every other devotion he loved Hanuman, and he built and inspired temples across northern India in his name. One of them, the ashram at Kainchi Dham in the Kumaon hills, still draws thousands of seekers every year. He kept almost nothing, wrote almost nothing, and gave no long sermons.

His whole teaching could sit in a single breath. Love everyone. Feed everyone. Serve everyone. Remember God. People who sat with him rarely remembered his words afterwards. What they remembered was how they felt in his presence, lighter, seen, and quietly changed.

He left his body in Vrindavan in 1973. Fifty years on, his presence has only grown. Steve Jobs travelled to India hoping to find him and later sent Mark Zuckerberg to his ashram in a difficult season. The physician Larry Brilliant, the actor Julia Roberts and the kirtan singer Krishna Das each trace a turn in their lives to him. He never left India and never asked for a following, and somehow he reached the whole world.

Why now

Steve Jobs. Mark Zuckerberg. Julia Roberts. Virat Kohli. Krishna Das.

What connects an Apple founder, a cricketing icon, a Hollywood star and a kirtan singer is a barefoot saint from the hills of India. Neem Karoli Baba, known to his devotees simply as Maharaj-ji, never sought fame and never left the subcontinent, yet his presence reached some of the most influential people of the modern age. It was never about religion. It was about simplicity, service, kindness and being fully present, the exact things a hyper-connected, quietly anxious generation is missing.

That is the wager Hanuman Ansh makes. That a story of devotion, told honestly and beautifully, can speak to a twenty-two-year-old scrolling at midnight as powerfully as it speaks to a lifelong devotee. This is a spiritual story built for Gen Z as much as for their grandparents, premium in its craft and ancient in its heart.

Darshan

His face, carried to a new feed

A devotional series shared on Anupriya's Instagram, where Baba's teachings meet the very generation the film is made for.

Neem Karoli Baba devotional image with a teaching

Neem Karoli Baba teaching on love and service

See more on Instagram →

The making

A devotee-led launch, not a premiere

Everything about how Hanuman Ansh is being brought into the world reflects the spirit of the film itself. Rather than a conventional glitzy launch, its first poster was unveiled at Baba's samadhi in Vrindavan, amid the Hanuman Chalisa and a traditional bhandara, surrounded not by press but by devotees. The film's imagery has been carried to temples and sacred spaces, letting the story begin where the story belongs.

As producer, Anupriya has shaped the film around a single principle: reverence. Every choice, from the music to the marketing, is designed to honour the subject rather than exploit it. It is an unusually patient way to make and release a film, and a deliberate one. The intention is not a weekend of noise but a work that keeps finding new audiences quietly, for years.

In Anupriya's words

I did not choose this story. It chose me.

People often ask why I feel so tied to Babaji's story. The honest answer is that I don't believe I chose this journey. I feel it chose me.

Out of so many people, I was given the chance to help carry his story to a new generation, to learn his teachings, and to understand why millions still feel him close. That is not something you plan for. It is something you are handed, gently, and asked to hold with care.

Making Hanuman Ansh has never felt like building a film. From the very start it felt like a calling from Baba. Before we began, we completed forty three days of the Hanuman Chalisa, and somehow, wherever we went, the Chalisa came with us. There was always a quiet sense of purpose sitting behind every decision.

"I don't see spirituality as something distant. It is something you live every day."

Sri Neem Karoli Baba in his blanket — Maharaj-ji

Anupriya with the same blanket — Anupriya

Same blanket, same blessings.

A blessing in Vrindavan

The morning I sat before Premanand Ji Maharaj

I still get goosebumps talking about this. Honestly, even now.

When my question was chosen and Premanand Ji Maharaj began to answer it, I froze. I was nervous and emotional at the same time, and somewhere in between I felt like crying. Not because anything was wrong. Sometimes a moment is so beautiful that your heart simply does not know how to hold it.

As he spoke about the path, a quiet recognition came over me. Reading the Hanuman Chalisa. Doing seva. Staying close to people who genuinely wanted to serve. It felt like he was describing the exact road we had been walking without ever naming it, and I sat there gently ticking boxes in my heart.

Some moments stay with you for the rest of your life. This is one of mine.

▶Premanand Ji Maharaj darshanWatch on Instagram

Kainchi Dham & devotion

Where the story lives

The heart of Hanuman Ansh is Kainchi Dham, the ashram in the hills of Uttarakhand founded by Neem Karoli Baba, and the wider world of Hindu devotion that surrounds it, from temple shrines to the deities at its centre.