“Cinema belongs to the street. It was born in the street, and it stays in the street, with those who are powerless.”
- Pedro Costa
An independent production house dedicated to creating films that document the sensibilities of the street. Founded by Janani Vijayanathan and Sachin Dheeraj Mudigonda.
Janani is an Indian classical dancer, software engineer, and independent film producer. She believes that art and technology have the power to change lives and that cinema, in both fiction & non-fiction forms, can raise questions unlike any other medium. Her work as a producer has been shown at prestigious film festivals worldwide, including Hot Docs, Raindance, EnergaCAMERIMAGE, and Krakow.
Her first film as a producer, 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 won the Best Short Documentary Award at the Oscar-qualifying 13th International Documentary & Short Film Festival of Kerala. The film also secured distribution on reputed platforms such as MUBI and Kinoscope. TESTIMONY OF ANA has also been selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick. Her second film as a producer, MEN IN BLUE, won the GRAND PRIZE at the 28th Annual DGA Student Film Awards in the West Coast Asian American Category and 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.
She is developing her feature-length debut film, Mouna Tharangam (A Silent Wave), which won 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 under the mentorship of Richard Linklater, Kat Candler, Rashaad Ernesto Green, Toby Hallbrooks, and Jacob Jaffke. It was also officially selected for the 17th edition of the prestigious NFDC Film Bazaar's Co-Production Market. The project was among the top ten shortlisted finalists for the AT&T Presents: Untold Stories by Tribeca Film Festival 2024.
Sachin is a DGA Student Award-winning filmmaker who studied at The University of Texas at Austin as part of their MFA program in Film & Media Production. His work has been screened at prestigious film festivals such as Hot Docs, Raindance, EnergaCAMERIMAGE, and Krakow. He strives to tell stories that demand an urgent conversation and seeks to engage with people, places, and communities that are slowly disappearing. He aims to affirm their existence through cinema by preserving their lives and memories.
His pre-thesis 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 MUBI and Kinoscope.
He received the prestigious President's Award for Global Learning at UT Austin and the Austin Film Society Grant in 2020.
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 MFA thesis project, MEN IN BLUE, which was shortlisted for the 2023 Yugo BAFTA Student Awards.