List of Indian film directors explained

India has many regional film centres, such as Bollywood (Hindi) in Mumbai, Telugu cinema (Tollywood) in Hyderabad, Marathi cinema in Pune, Tamil cinema in Chennai, Malayalam cinema in Kochi, Kannada cinema in Bangalore, Odia Cinema in Bhubaneswar, Assamese cinema in Guwahati, Punjabi cinema in Mohali and Bengali cinema in Kolkata . Most Indian film directors are known for their work with one regional industry, while many others are active directors of films from multiple industries.

Directors of parallel or independent cinema

Parallel Cinema is otherwise known as "Art films" cinema, and is known for its serious and realistic films with real-life situations. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Indian government financed a number of such films, on Indian themes. Many of the directors were graduates of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Ritwik Ghatak was a professor at the institute and a well-known director in his own right. The best-known Indian "neo-realist" is Satyajit Ray.

Active in multiple languages

The following is a list of film directors who have directed films from more than one regional film industry in India. This does not include directors who work in a single industry whose films have been dubbed into other languages.

DIRECTORAssameseBengaliBhojpuriEnglishGujaratiHindi KannadaMalayalamMarathiMaithiliOdiaPunjabiTamilTelugu
Ram Gopal Varma
K. Raghavendra Rao
Dasari Narayana Rao
S. S. Rajamouli
Mrinal Sen
Puri Jagannadh
S. Shankar
Bharathan
Basu Bhattacharya
Gautham Vasudev Menon
Girish Karnad
Girish Kasaravalli
Mani Ratnam
Rituparno Ghosh
Sumitra Bhave–Sunil Sukthankar
AR Murugadoss
Puttanna Kanagal
Satish Rajwade
Sachin Kundalkar
Shonali Bose
Prasanta Nanda
Hara Patnaik
Siddique
Sunil Kumar Desai
Mahesh Manjrekar
Upendra
Nagraj Manjule
Om Raut
Anup Bhandari
Laxman Utekar
Srijit Mukherji
Shaji N Karun

Sanskrit Film directors

Tamil film directors

Mari Selvaraj

References