Indian actress Sayani Gupta, known for Delhi Crime and Axone, is set to make her US feature film debut in Arya, with principal photography currently under way in Duluth, Minnesota. The film marks the feature directorial debut of Neil Tuli, a former Netflix and Illumination strategy executive, and adds a notable international name to a growing slate of cross-border productions. Gupta plays the title role of Arya Sinha, a disciplined piano teacher from a prestigious Indian conservatory who reluctantly takes on a placement to rescue a struggling school band programme in northern Minnesota, only to find her sense of control and career ambitions upended by her unfamiliar surroundings.

Gupta, whose breakout came in Shonali Bose's Margarita with a Straw at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, has also appeared in Parched, The Hungry and the Netflix drama Article 15, for which she received an International Indian Film Academy award nomination. Arya is produced under Tuli's American Haathi banner alongside Pallavi and Keertana Sastry of Adda G Productions, with Gupta also serving as an executive producer. She is represented by Matt Kniaz at Crimson Media and Suchir Batra at Zero Gravity Management.