Biography
Sachin is a Directors Guild of America Student Award-winning filmmaker whose work has been screened at prestigious film festivals such as Hot Docs, Raindance, EnergaCAMERIMAGE, and Kraków. He finished his MFA in Film & Media Production from The University of Texas at Austin. His short documentary film, TESTIMONY OF ANA, won the National Film Award (Swarna Kamal/Golden Lotus) for the Best Non-Feature Film issued by the Government of India and was qualified for the 95th Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Short category. The film also secured distribution on reputed platforms such as Vimeo Staff Picks, MUBI, SIMA Academy, and Kinoscope. Sachin won the competitive Panavision New Filmmaker Program Equipment Grant and the UT Graduate Continuing Fellowship (an award given to support the final year of an outstanding graduate student) to implement his short narrative project, MEN IN BLUE, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Yugo BAFTA Student Awards. It also won the Grand Jury Prize at the 21st Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) and the Special Jury Prize at the 22nd International Student Film and Video Festival (ISFVF) organized by the Beijing Film Academy. Sachin is developing a feature-length film, Mouna Tharangam (A Silent Wave), which was awarded the 'New Texas Voices Award' from the Austin Film Society as part of their Feature Film Grant 2023. The project was workshopped in the 2023 AFS Artist Intensive. It was officially selected for the 17th edition of the NFDC Film Bazaar's Co-Production Market, a finalist for the 2024 IFFLA Industry Day: Launchpad Competition, and was among the top ten shortlisted finalists for the AT&T Presents: Untold Stories by Tribeca Film Festival 2024. The project also won the 2024 SFFILM Rainin Grant and got into the inaugural DESI LIST curated by THE BLACK LIST. His other feature project in development, Mano Prapancham (The World Within), was officially selected for the 2024 Produire Au Sud (PAS) Workshop in Nantes, France, and won the 2024 Austin Film Society Feature Film Grant. It also won the 2024 Screenwriters Association of India (SWA) Script Lab and Pitch Fest by becoming one of the top six scripts from about 1300+ submissions after multiple rounds of evaluation.