Partho Sen-Gupta

Partho Sen-Gupta (also spelled Partho Sen Gupta or Partho Sengupta pronounced "Partho Shen-Goopto") is an independent film director and screenwriter. He is a French citizen, of Indian origin.
Biography.
Sen-Gupta was born in Mumbai (Bombay), on 2 September 1965. He has been working in cinema since the age of seventeen, starting his career as an apprentice in the art department, in the studios of "Bollywood" in Mumbai. He worked with an Indian art director Bijon Dasgupta on the sets of big budget commercial Hindi films like "Saagar" and "Mr. India" among others.
After having spent a few years and finishing his apprenticeship, he became assistant art director. In 1988, he worked on his first film as art director or production designer in an Indian art movie called "Main Zinda Hoon" ("I am Alive") directed by Sudhir Mishra. He then set up his design studio working on numerous advertising films and art movies, designing sets and specializing in real-time SFX. He won the Best Art Director Award in 1989. He also worked as production designer on the French film "Nocturne Indien" directed by Alain Corneau and shot in Mumbai.
In 1993, he was selected to do a two-month summer workshop at FEMIS, the French film institute in Paris. During the workshop, he directed his first short film "La Derniere..." based on Samuel Beckett's radio play "Krapp's Last Tape". He was then awarded a three and a half year full scholarship to study film direction at the same school.
During his film school years, he made four short fiction films "Le Cochon", "La Partition", "Trajet Discontinu", and "La Petite Souris" which took him to different European film festivals and won awards.
After graduation in 1997, he directed his first feature film "Hava Aney Dey" ("Let the Wind Blow") which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004. It was selected in many international film festivals and won awards. The film was part of the Global Lens 2008 series of the Global Film Initiative. and premiered at the MoMA NYC, in January 2008.
In 2005, he made a documentary film "The Way of Beauty" on the Indo-fusion group Shakti which was released on the DVD in May 2006.
In 2008, his new feature film project "Sunrise", was selected among 30 other international projects at the 11th Pusan promotion Plan (3 to 6 October 2008) at the Pusan International Film Festival. "Sunrise" was the only Indian project in the selection.
"Sunrise" was completed and released in October 2014 and premiered at the 2014 Busan International Film Festival and numerous international film festivals, received awards and international critical acclaim.
In 2017, Sen-Gupta wrote and directed his first Australian feature film "Slam". It was an official selected project at the 2016 International Film Festival Rotterdam's CineMart and the 2016 Berlinale Co-oproduction Market. The film starring Adam Bakri, from the Academy Awards nominated film "Omar" and award winning Australian actress Rachael Blake, was filmed in October and November 2017 in Sydney, Australia.
"Slam" is selected in the Official Selection Competition at the 2018 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and had its world premiere on 27 November 2018.