Sidharth Srinivasan is a renowned independent filmmaker based in New Delhi, India. As a child, he was fascinated by storytelling and make-believe, which eventually led him to pursue a career in filmmaking while still in high school at the Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh.
Sidharth's passion for unconventional cinema, rooted in original storytelling, has earned his films numerous international festival selections, including Venice, Toronto, and Rotterdam, and numerous awards. His work aspires to be poetic, provocative, outré, and iconoclastic.
After graduating from St. Stephen's College (Delhi University) with an honors degree in Economics in 1997, Sidharth chose not to attend a formal film school. Instead, he began assisting the renowned avant-garde filmmaker Kumar Shahani, who was himself a student of Ritwik Ghatak and Robert Bresson.
Sidharth's debut short film, Swamohita (aka The Tightrope Walker),premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2000, when he was just 23 years old. This was followed by the subversive micro-budget indie Divya Drishti (aka The Divine Vision) in 2001, which was India's first digital feature film and depicted the secret sexual lives of working-class India.
Sidharth's first quasi-mainstream film, Amavas, was a supernatural thriller that diverged from traditional Bollywood norms. Although it was shelved, Sidharth learned the importance of creative control over his work and vowed to never direct again without it.
Under his own independent label, Reel Illusion Films, Sidharth wrote, produced, and directed the feature film Pairon Talle (Soul of Sand) in 2007. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010 and received a niche theatrical release in India.
Sidharth's next feature, Kriya, is an Indo-UK coproduction shot in just 10 days. The film is an uncategorizable, genre-driven arthouse film and has been produced by Reel Illusion Films alongside Accord Equips Pvt Ltd and veteran production executive B. S. Narayanaswamy. Kriya is set to premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2020 in Montreal, Canada.
During his breaks between features, Sidharth discovered the liberating gift of documentary filmmaking and has made numerous non-fiction films and shorts. His documentary feature, Bahurupiya (aka Wearer of Faces),played over 10 festivals and was telecast on Doordarshan and EBS, Korea.
Sidharth is also actively involved in film pedagogy, serving as a guest lecturer at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) and mentoring students on screenwriting and documentary filmmaking. He has numerous projects in development, including feature films and a neo-nor web series.
