Ashim Ahluwalia
Directing
Biography
Ashim Ahluwalia is a Mumbai-based filmmaker whose provocative, genre-bending films have helped define a new wave of Indian cinema. His directorial debut, JOHN & JANE, premiered at the Toronto and Berlin film festivals in 2006 and became the first Indian film to receive a theatrical release from HBO Films. His second feature, MISS LOVELY (2012), premiered in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival and unearthed India’s underground sex horror cinema, while also reviving forgotten figures like disco singer Rupa. In 2017, he directed DADDY, an unorthodox biopic based on the true story of Arun Gawli, a feared underworld don still alive and serving time in a maximum-security prison. The film marked a bold break from formula, with critics calling Ahluwalia “the new-age godfather that Indian gangster films desperately need” (Poulomi Das, Arre). His short EVENTS IN A CLOUD CHAMBER, shot entirely on Super 8 film and reimagining modernist painter Akbar Padamsee’s lost 1969 experimental film, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Ahluwalia's contribution to the folk-horror anthology THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL (2018) premiered at SXSW and was distributed in the United States by Neon. His first series, CLA$$, produced for Netflix, was released in 2023. Though a global hit, the show retained Ahluwalia’s preoccupation with social disparity and the dark underbelly of modern India, focusing on the collision between working-class students and the ultra-rich. Ahluwalia is the only Indian director to have had his work premiere in the official selections of Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, and SXSW. Sight and Sound’s Jonathan Romney described him as “a very impressive talent.” He was named one of the ten best emerging film directors working today by Phaidon Press in Take 100: The Future of Film.
Known For
Three students from a poor neighborhood join an exclusive high school for Delhi elite where dark secrets and rumors ultimately lead to murder.
Class
Jaspal Neelam, Vinod Talwar, Dilip Gulati and Kishan Shah directors of the golden age of 'B-movies' take you for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of their films.
Cinema Marte Dum Tak
A feature-length anthology film. They are known as myths, lore, and folktales. Created to give logic to mankind’s darkest fears, these stories laid the foundation for what we now know as the horror genre.
The Field Guide to Evil
A detailed look at the history of horror anthology films.
Tales of the Uncanny
A Hindi feature film set in the lower depths of Bombay's "C" grade film industry. Miss Lovely follows the devastating story of two brothers who produce sleazy horror films in the mid-1980s.
Miss Lovely
This is the gritty and sensational true story of Arun Gulab Gawli, a mill worker’s son who grew up in Mumbai’s impoverished Dagdi Chawl, to become an infamous don, politician and chief rival of the most powerful crime boss of the day, Dawood Ibrahim. Daddy realistically charts Mumbai’s true crime history from the 1970s and 1980s until 2012, when Gawli was finally sentenced to life imprisonment.
Daddy
In 1969, Akbar Padamsee, one of the pioneers of Modern Indian painting, made a visionary 16mm film called Events in a Cloud Chamber. This was one of the only Indian experimental films ever made. The print is now lost and no copies exist. Over 40 years later, filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia worked with Padamsee, now 89 years old, to remake the film.
Events in a Cloud Chamber
A new form of observational documentary that borders on science-fiction, John & Jane follows the stories of six Call Agents that answer American 1-800 numbers at a Mumbai call center.
John & Jane
When the wedding takes place the hijras (third gender role in India) arrive to bless the shifting tides of minds in a swirl of colours and identities.
HUM
An extremely rare and hard-to-find documentary short by director Ashim Ahluwalia. Thin Air chronicles the lives of three magicians against the backdrop of contemporary Bombay and offers a refreshingly complex vision of urban life through three illusionists who have little option but to confront reality.
Thin Air
Ashim Ahluwalia offers a disturbing glimpse into the dark side of Indian cinema and the broken lives it left behind with Unidentified Actress.