Sanjay M. Khanduri

Sanjay is a multidisciplinary filmmaker, who write, directs and designs his own projects. He has been brought up in New Delhi in an affluent conservative family. He did his schooling from Blue Bells International School and graduated from Delhi University in Electronics with the aim to be an Engineer. Wanting to be a part of a job which has a voice, Khandduri chose to leave electronics as career and turned to media to join as an investigative correspondent with TV-18. Soon seeing his gift for fiction he was asked to direct for MTV shows. Here he realized his penchant for VFX and leaving everything behind he came to Mumbai. Here after a brief struggle he managed to join Crest Communications, a leading VFX ad-films house, where he joined at a much lower position as a production trainee just to be in the place he wanted. It is said there were times when he slept nights on studio floors on the black cloth in office as he had accommodation problems due to low salary. Seeing his passion and acumen soon he was promoted to production executive to production head and within a year he went on to direct ad films for the company. Spending late nights with VFX guys watching international films with complicated VFX sequences, Khandduri soon knew where he wanted to be. He understood that the ultimate power of fiction lies in movies. As he made his mind join films the company refused to release him. So with his salaries pending he left to focus on getting a job in films as assistant director. Khanduri struggled for a year on his savings and just when he was on brink of being pushed out of the city he got a break with the celebrated director Subhash Ghai on film Taal (1999) starring Aishwarya Rai, Akshay Khanna and Anil Kapoor. Post that Khanduri never looked back. Then he joined his favorite director Kundan Shah as chief associate director on film 'Dil Hai Tumhara' starring Arjun Rampal, Priety Zinta, Rekha, Jimmy Shergil and Mahima Chaudhary. It is here that Kundan Shah who he considers his Guru figure advised him that only way to get a break as a director in the scenario for an outsider was to write a high concept low budgeted film, a film that would make a producer sleepless and force him to sign you as a director. Debuting with his dark comic thriller 'Ek Chalis Ki Last Local' (meaning: The Last Local Train of 1:40 am) Sanjay Khandduri deeply marks his presence in Hindi independent cinema as a writer and director. The film had a unique concept of protagonist's journey in 2.5 hrs with film duration too as 2.5 hours. Being a low budgeted film it picked by word of mouth and eventually became DVD cult with youngsters. The film has won high accolades from masses and critics for its innovative concept and screenplay. The film 'Ek Chalis Ki Last Local' (meaning The Last Tube of 1:40 am) is weaved around true incident of his life of missing his last train back home, one rainy night. It received four stardust nominations including Best Debutant and a Silver Palm Award for Excellence in Filmmaking. His next film 'Kismet Love Paisa Dilli' was again a one night social thriller satire. This film did average due to it's release issues but still garnered him a Golden Palm Award in Mexico International Film Festival and Medal of Honour for Best Original Screenplay. Khandduri's beat of cinema is very different from the rest of his league. He was noticed for his obviously nascent cinematic style and is picked for making a war biopic on Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rawat for ROMP productions.