When did you decide you wanted to be an actor/director?

​I started animating when I was twelve. At that age, you don’t really “decide” anything — you just follow whatever pulls you. For me, that pull was storytelling. When my first short screened at Viborg Animation Festival in Denmark, something clicked: This is it. This is my language. That was the moment I knew directing and animating would be part of my life forever.

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How did your family react?

When I was 12, my mom signed me up for an animation film-making workshop during the summer near my home in Delhi. Later the film i created there got screened at a festival in Serbia and later i went to denmark with my teacher to learn more animation and had a small screening at the Viborg animation festival at that time. During that time I was also working on my short film Adventures of Malia which got completed by the time I was 16. My mom was actually the one who set everything in motion.

 

Who is your biggest fan?

​Probably the kids I work with. Children don’t pretend to like something — if they enjoy it, they tell you. If they don’t, they tell you louder. Their honesty is the best kind of fandom.

 

For you cinema is…?

​A translation device. A way to turn something invisible — an emotion, a question, a memory — into something you can actually see and feel. It’s the closest thing we have to showing each other our inner worlds.

 

The biggest challenge of being an actor/director/screenwriter is…

​Listening. Everyone thinks the challenge is control, but it’s actually the opposite. You have to stay open enough for the story to shape you while you’re shaping it.

 

Who’s the first Artist that let you understand you wanted to be an actor/director/screenwriter?

Hayao Miyazaki, without a doubt. Watching Spirited Away felt like being invited into someone else’s dream — messy, magical, and deeply human. I wanted to make worlds like that.

 

What really excites you artistically or emotionally?

Moments of raw honesty — a line a child blurts out, a drawing that’s imperfect but true, a glitch in the system that unexpectedly becomes the emotional center of the scene. Anything unfiltered excites me.

 

What’s that movie that taught you the most?

Requiem for a Dream. Not because of the darkness, but because of the rhythm. Aronofsky showed me that editing is a heartbeat — that you can tell a whole emotional arc just with pacing.

 

On set what excites you the most?

The moment when chaos suddenly makes sense. You’re surrounded by sketches, notes, unfinished shots — and then something clicks. You see the film emerge in real time.

 

What scares you the most?

Losing curiosity. As long as I stay curious, even fear becomes useful.

 

If you should change country where would you like to work?

The U.S. — specifically places where animation, technology, and behavioral science overlap. That’s the intersection I’m most drawn to right now.

 

Can you tell us about how the Short Film "What we imagined" was born?

It was born in a workshop. Two young girls started sketching characters — a fast girl, a boy with wings — and their ideas were so alive they pulled me in instantly. My job was to direct their imagination into form without muting it. The story grew through their drawings, our conversations, and the little moments in between, like when one of them quietly said, “Humans can change.” That sentence shaped the whole film.

 

What is your next project?

I’m working on expanding my workshop model into longer-form storytelling — blending animation, psychology, and creative computing. I want to keep building stories with children, not just for them.

 

Make a wish about your career...

To keep making films that feel handmade, human, and a little bit brave — and to keep creating spaces where new voices can discover their own stories.