Biography

Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni is an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India and is one of the most important contemporary voices in Indian cinema. He has an immense body of work, having made critically and commercially acclaimed feature films and short films. His films like Girni and Three of Us have been screened in more than ten international film festivals including the Clermont Ferrand, Rotterdam, Oberhausen and Berlinale Film Festival. Girni has also won the National Awards for Best Short Film and President's Gold Medal for Best Direction. His first feature film Valu was a significant film for Marathi cinema. It is amongst the few Marathi films that kept the box office collection on an upward swing and also traveled to more than 30 International film festivals. He then went on to work on features like Vihir and Deool, which won three National Awards including the Best Feature Film of the year. Apart from that, he has been invited as a jury in festivals like Clermont Ferrand, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Cairo Film Festival, Thai Film Festival, International Film Festival of Kerala. He also conducts extensive workshops and film clubs for young filmmakers. His feature Highway was critically acclaimed for its representation of the cross section of society through an ensemble cast and was screened in the New York Indian film festival. He is currently working on an unscripted Netflix Series.

- IMDb mini biography by: Tulsea