Ajitpal Singh | Director/Writer

Ajitpal Singh | Director/Writer

Ajitpal Singh is a self-taught filmmaker living in Mumbai. Born in Punjab, Ajitpal was a young boy when his father’s cinema in Bathinda suffered huge losses during the Punjab insurgency of the 1980s and 90s. The family was forced into a move to an Ahmedabad ghetto in Gujarat, where they lived amid poverty and violence. Ajitpal overcame these early barriers to study chemistry, theatre and photography, before choosing filmmaking to express himself creatively.

His first feature film which he wrote and directed, Fire in the Mountains (2021), premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema – Dramatic competition. It went on to play at more than 30 film festivals around the world and win numerous awards. Kino Lorber has acquired the film and will release it theatrically in North America and Canada from May 2022. Ajitpal directed his debut web series Tabbar (2021) which is streaming on SonyLIV and was ranked highly in various Indian ‘Best of 2021’ lists – it came in fifth in Variety’s Best International Shows of 2021. In 2018, his short film Rammat Gammat won two honours at the prestigious Oberhausen International Short Film Festival and is now available to watch on Mubi.

Ajitpal is currently working on a horror film set in Kashmir.