Roi Roi Binale: The Sun Rises Early in the East and So Does Assamese Cinema

For years, people in India’s Northeast have demanded a different time zone, a recognition that the sun rises here almost an hour earlier than it does in Delhi or Mumbai. The argument has often been bureaucratic, confined to policy papers and editorials. But on the morning of October 31, 2025, Assam gave that idea its most poetic proof yet.

At 4:25 a.m., when most of India still slept, cinema halls across Assam lit up to the glow of Roi Roi Binale. Streets in Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Tezpur, and Jorhat shimmered under headlamps and the sound of masses. People stood in long queues before sunrise, tickets in hand, hearts wide awake. For the first time in living memory, a film had opened before dawn and every show was sold out.

This morning, time itself seemed to shift. Assam had entered its own cinematic time zone, one in which the sun, the people, and the screen rose together. What we witnessed was more than a movie release; it was a social awakening. A people who once watched their cinema halls close forever now gathered before sunrise to reclaim them. This was not a fan frenzy. It was a people’s movement, a reminder that when love and purpose converge, worlds can indeed be remade.

The Morning India Slept Through

For decades, Assamese cinema lived on the edges of India’s film imagination earnest, experimental, and often struggling to find screens. In the early 2000s, one hall after another shut down across the state. Piracy, political unrest, and the invasion of Hindi and English multiplex culture left local filmmakers gasping for breath. Cinema-going  once a communal ritual had all but vanished. Theatres like Anuradha and Apsara in Guwahati, once homes of magic, had fallen silent. And yet, on this October morning, the silence broke literally before the dawn. Roi Roi Binale, starring and directed by Zubeen Garg, didn’t just open to packed halls. It opened at an hour that felt like a statement. The showtime 4:25 a.m. mirrored the very sunrise that arrives early in the Northeast, almost as if the cosmos had aligned with the people. The film’s release schedule itself became a metaphor for a region that has long lived ahead of “Indian Standard Time.”

Zubeen Garg and the Timekeepers of Culture

No account of this phenomenon is complete without understanding Zubeen Garg not merely a musician or filmmaker, but a cultural timekeeper of Assam. For over two decades, he has sung, acted, and spoken in ways that mirror the contradictions of his people rebellious yet tender, local yet global, artistic yet deeply political.

When Zubeen makes a film, it isn’t a commercial act; it’s a collective exercise in hope. His art carries the emotional frequency of an entire generation that grew up oscillating between loss and resilience. Roi Roi Binale thus became more than cinema, it became a space for self-recognition. The people didn’t come to watch a movie; they came to participate in their own story.

When Cinema Became Sunrise

Imagine the scene: long lines outside theatres before dawn, crowds singing his songs, families arriving wrapped in shawls against the early morning chill. In cities and small towns alike, it was a carnival that transcended class, language, and age. No other film released that day and none needed to. The moment carried a paradoxical beauty: once upon a time, halls in Assam shut down due to lack of viewers; now they opened early because demand overflowed. If the 1990s and 2000s were decades of cinematic dusk, Roi Roi Binale marked the dawn quite literally.

The Tamil Connection: When the Clock and the Crowd Sync

To understand the depth of what happened in Assam, one must look southward to Tamil Nadu, where 4 a.m. releases have long been a cultural tradition. When Rajinikanth or Vijay’s films release, dawn screenings turn into mass rituals: fireworks, chants, milk baths for cut-outs. It is cinema as faith, time as devotion.

But Assam’s early morning screenings were not imitations of that fervour. They were a parallel evolution, a people discovering the same joy of community through their own cultural lens. If Tamil Nadu celebrates cinema through deity-like fandom, Assam celebrated it through belonging. The 4 a.m. shows were not about worshipping a star, but about celebrating the self the Assamese language, humour, music, and collective identity that had long been sidelined. When theatres opened before the sun, it wasn’t just a tribute to Zubeen Garg. It was a statement that Assamese stories deserved to rise early and shine bright.

More Than Box Office

Numbers cannot capture what this means. Yes, the shows were sold out. Yes, social media exploded with pictures and videos. But the real success lay in something subtler, the restoration of faith. Cinema is more than an industry; it is a mirror through which people imagine themselves. When a community fills theatres before dawn, it’s not for profit or prestige. It’s for belonging. Roi Roi Binale brought people back not just to cinema halls, but to each other. It reminded them that stories matter that they still have the power to create shared joy.

The Symbolism of 4 A.M.

The timing of this release wasn’t accidental; it was destiny. For years, the Northeast’s demand for a separate time zone symbolized more than geographical precision, it symbolized the region’s yearning to be seen in its own rhythm, its own light. So when the first show of Roi Roi Binale began before dawn, it was as if that wish had materialized. At 4:25 a.m., the cinematic clock synchronized with the natural one. The screen lit up just as the horizon began to glow. It was a moment of poetic justice the east finally acknowledging its own light, on its own time.

The People’s Movement Beyond Cinema

What unfolded this morning in Assam deserves to be called what it truly was: a people’s movement. No government campaign, no marketing blitz could have generated such enthusiasm. This was spontaneous, self-organized, and deeply emotional. The audience itself became the movement. And therein lies the power of cultural participation when people reclaim joy, they also reclaim agency. Theatres became public squares again, not places of consumption but communion. The energy that animated these screenings is the same energy that can nurture social change the same solidarity that can protect rivers, forests, and languages. The movement for cinema, in its essence, mirrors the movement for life.

A Different Time Zone, A Different Future

Assam’s 4 a.m. phenomenon has done something remarkable: it has reset the cultural clock. It has shown that time like art can bend to the will of the people. For too long, the Northeast was told that its stories were small, its audiences limited, its creative ambitions secondary. But on this morning, the state proved otherwise. It declared, quietly and confidently, that it will not wait for validation from Delhi or Mumbai. In this dawn of people’s cinema, the Northeast has found its own time zone not just in hours and minutes, but in imagination.

A Note for the Future

When the lights dimmed inside those halls and Roi Roi Binale flickered onto the screen, something beyond cinema happened. It was as if time itself paused  to honour the persistence of a people who never gave up on their stories. What we witnessed this morning was not a box-office triumph. It was a cultural sunrise an awakening that told the world: we, in the East, have always been ahead of time.

The sun, after all, rises first here. And now, so does cinema.

As Assam basks in the glow of this new dawn, may we carry this collective energy beyond the screens into our relationships, our environment, and our shared humanity.

Because when hearts gather in love and purpose, even time pauses, listening softly to the rhythm of a people’s dream. And in that stillness, with tears that know their tune,

I feel like singing his 1993 song, ‘Xomoiu Jen Thomoki Roi – সময়ো যেন থমকি ৰয়’ from Mur Huriya Geet, where time itself seemed to stand still and listen.

(The writer teaches media studies at EFL University, Shillong)

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