Saumyananda Sahi | Cinematographer

Saumyananda Sahi | Cinematographer

Born in Bangalore, Saumyananda Sahi originally studied philosophy at St Stephens College in Delhi before deciding he wanted to be a cinematographer, attending the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune.

Over the past decade, Saumyananda has worked on a variety of projects, both factual and fiction, with such filmmakers as Kamal Swaroop, Shaunak Sen, Prateek Vats, Arun Karthick, Anamika Haksar, Thomas F Lennon and Prashant Nair. His work has played at film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Rotterdam, Locarno, Busan, Hot Docs (Canada) and IDFA (Holland). He was nominated for an Asia Pacific Award (Balekempa, 2018) and, more recently, a 2021 Filmfare Award (Eeb Allay Ooo!, 2019) for Best Cinematography. He won awards at both MIFF (Have You Seen the Arana?, 2014) and IDSFFK (Rangbhoomi, 2014). His most recent work includes feature film Nasir (2020) and documentaries Invisible Demons (2021) and All That Breathes (2022).

As well as his work as a cinematographer, Saumyananda has directed two documentaries and has producer, editor and production designer credits to his name. In 2019, Saumyananda was selected for the PJLF Three Rivers writing residency to develop his directorial debut fiction film, which he will be co-directing with Tanushree Das in 2023.