Ashim Ahluwalia
2021His short film EVENTS IN A CLOUD CHAMBER (2016) made on Super 8 with famed Indian modernist painter Akbar Padamsee opened at the 73rd Venice Film Festival in the Classics section and has gone on to show at the BFI London Film Festival and at the Museum of Modern Art in New Directors/ New Films, amongst numerous others.
His newest project, the anthology folk horror film, THE FIELD GUIDE TO EVIL, had a world premiere at South by Southwest (SXSW) on March 16th, 2018, after which it opened theatrically in the US (distributed by Neon) and on Netflix.
In May 2013, he received the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College, his alma mater. The award is "given in recognition of a significant contribution to artistic or literary heritage.” In November 2013, he was selected to be on the Jury of the 8th edition of the Rome Film Festival for the CinemaXXI section.
Ahluwalia is the only Indian director to have had his work premiere in the official selections of the Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto and SXSW festivals. Sight and Sound’s Jonathan Romney has described Ahluwalia 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."
Thin Air
Ashim Ahluwalia
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
Events in a Cloud Chamber
Ashim Ahluwalia
Akbar Padamsee
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
Daddy
Ashim Ahluwalia
Arjun Rampal, Aishwarya Rajesh
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
The Field Guide to Evil
Ashim Ahluwalia, Severin Fiala
Marlene Hauser, Luzia Oppermann
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
