Anush Desai — Writer & Director

Selected work

We didn't wait for permission. Here's what happened.

2024

Missing Hour

Short film · Writer, Director

The most recent one. Watch it and tell me what you think.

Watch

2023

Sons of Niraya

Feature · 70 min · Writer, Director

Screened once, to 350 people in a packed hall in Hubballi. Never released online — some films belong to the room they were watched in.

Trailer

2022

Project Sharapanjara

Feature · Kannada · Executive Producer

Ran crew and operations on a full feature shoot. Delivered on schedule and under budget.

2017

Avalokana

Short film · Writer, Director

Second short of that year. We couldn't stop.

Watch

2017

Musukinolage

Short film · Writer, Director

Promoted by walking into colleges uninvited and asking strangers to watch our work. Took more courage than anything I've put on screen.

Watch

2016

Hattirada Daari

Web series · Creator, Director

One Nikon and a group of friends who had no business being on a film set. 50,000 viewers, zero rupees of marketing. The Times of India wrote about it. Viacom 18 called, then un-called.

Watch

Three things worth knowing before we talk.

The region is the story, not the setting.

Uttara Karnataka usually turns up in our cinema as a dialect for a comic character, or a village someone escapes from. Its politics, its history, its unfinished arguments are worth more than that. I'm not adapting a region from a distance — it's the ground I'm standing on.

Everything I've started, I've finished.

A web series, three shorts, a seventy-minute feature — all of them completed and put in front of people. As executive producer on a feature, I ran the crew and brought the shoot in on schedule. Nothing I've begun has been abandoned halfway.

I understand audiences almost as well as I understand stories.

Four years in performance marketing, buying users at scale for consumer apps. Most first-time directors hand you a film and hope. I can hand you a film and the plan for getting people into the room.

I know how audiences are found.

Four years of it. Growth & Retention Lead at Games24x7 (MY11Circle). Marketing Operations for Pokémon GO across APAC at Niantic. User acquisition, funnel economics, retention, media buying — the machinery that decides whether anybody shows up.

50,000Viewers on a self-published web series, with no paid marketing

350People in the room for a single unreleased feature screening

4 yrsBuying audiences for a living, at consumer-app scale

~60Working screens across Uttara Karnataka — the release market I know best

Let's make cinema together.

I've taken independent work as far as it goes on its own. What I'm building now is a Kannada theatrical feature, set in Uttara Karnataka, and I'm looking for a producer to make it with. If that's you, I have a script you should read. If you're anyone else, I'm still glad to hear from you.

anushdesai96@gmail.com