Sidharth Srinivasan is a Delhi-based filmmaker whose works have played at Venice, Toronto, Rotterdam and MoMA. A childhood obsession with make-believe led to Sidharth’s love for cinema. Graduating from Delhi University’s St. Stephen’s College in 1997, he lost no time and began assisting the renowned avant-garde filmmaker Kumar Shahani, himself a student of Ritwik Ghatak and Robert Bresson.
On completing his apprenticeship, with zero funds to speak of, Sidharth knew he must deep dive to convert make-believe into making movies. His debut short Swamohita (aka The Tightrope Walker) was made by the skin of the teeth after begging, borrowing and managing to score a few cans of 2-year old, twice fog-tested 35 mm raw stock. Swamohita had its world premiere in official selection at the Venice Film Festival in 2000. Sidharth was all of 23 years old at the time.
He followed this up in 2001 with the subversive micro-budget indie drama Divya Drishti (aka The Divine Vision). The venture was ahead of it’s time, not only for being India’s first feature film to be shot digitally on MiniDV, but also for it’s colorful language and frank depiction of the secret sexual lives – straight and gay – of middle class India. Shot in just 7 days for under ten thousand dollars, Divya Drishti was banned by the Indian censors but went on to win numerous awards and travel the festival circuit extensively.
Sidharth’s first quasi-mainstream venture Amavas was unique for its casting-against-type of accomplished character actors such as Victor Banerjee, Konkona Sensharma and Mahesh Manjrekar. A gore-drenched, songless, supernatural thriller – Amavas was a rarity for Bollywood in 2005. Unfortunately, the producers unilaterally shelved this strange little film, and it never saw the light of day. Just 28, Sidharth learnt the hard way that if he wanted to make films his own way, he needed creative ownership.
Pulling himself up by the bootstraps, Sidharth wrote and directed the feature film Pairon Talle (Soul of Sand), produced independently by his outfit Reel Illusion Films, with the support of the Hubert Bals Fund. The film world premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, had it’s US premiere at MoMA in 2011, followed by a European premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Equally close to his heart are Sidharth’s non-fiction works. In 2017 he completed a climate change short for TERI titled Solargarh. This was preceded in 2015 by the docu-feature Bahurupiya (aka Wearer of Faces). Bahurupiya has played the Open Frame Film Festival, SiGNS, MIFF, ViBGYOR and the International Documentary & Short Film Festival of Kerala. It had its international premiere at EIDF, and is one of the only Indian films broadcast on EBS, Korea.
Asides from this, Sidharth has made a cultural heritage documentary on Hampi for UNESCO in 2007 titled Where the Ruins Speak, and a docu-feature on urbanization for Films Division and PSBT titled An Outpost of Delhi in 2011.
Sidharth is currently developing the rooted Indian horror film Traas (aka The Profane) and an untitled fairytale for adults. Traas was selected to the HAF 2011, Locarno Open Doors 2012 and NAFF at PiFan 2012 where it won two awards. In his spare time, Sidharth is busy experimenting on a dystopian Indian graphic novel called The Penance, which should be complete by early 2018.
