2019 Juries
Sohil Vaidya
Director-Writer
Sohil is a winner of the prestigious Directors Guild of America(D.G.A) Student Award, 2018 for his thesis film ‘Difficult People’. Difficult People was also nominated for the American Society of Cinematographers Student Heritage Awards. His films have screened at international film festivals including Palm Springs, Flickers Rhode Island, Edmonton International, LA Asian Pacific, Dharamshala (DIFF), Kerala (IDSFFK), LA shorts; and have been acquired by multiple online platforms such as ShortsTV, Omeleto, Discover and Viddsee. Sohil is a BAFTA Fellow for their newcomer’s program in Los Angeles. Sohil is an alum of the University of Southern California(U.S.C) Film School with an M.F.A in Film Directing.
At USC, Sohil was chosen to co-direct an episode for a Warner Brothers Studios funded project, ‘Samir’. Financing his education was only possible for him with the help of numerous scholarships such as the James Bridges Directing Scholarship and Edward Thomas Troutner Cinematography Scholarship. Sohil wants to bridge the gap between east and west with thought-provoking, visually compelling, and universally relatable stories that unite all of us as humans in the end.
Gaganvihari Borate
Gaganvihari BorateFilm Maker
He directed his first marathi feature film ‘Suryodaya’ starring Nana Patekar, Deepti Naval, Neelu Phule, Shriram Lagoo & Mohan Agashe. The film not only won critical acclaim in national and international media but also went on to win the state award and was specially screened in the ‘Indian panorama’, where it was appreciated by the great Indian director Satyajit Ray in 1990 at Kolkata.
His Hindi feature film directorial debut began with the film ‘Lal Salaam’ starring Nandita Das , Sharad Kapoor, Sayaji Shinde, Rajpal Yadav, Vijay Raj & Rakhee Sawant.