{"id":565903,"date":"2026-03-26T16:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/565903\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T16:00:12","slug":"indian-actor-sayani-gupta-makes-directorial-debut-with-aasmani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/565903\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Actor Sayani Gupta Makes Directorial Debut With ‘Aasmani’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIndian actor Sayani Gupta<\/a> is stepping behind the camera for the first time with \u201cAasmani<\/a>,\u201d a short film she has written, directed and produced. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe project marks a milestone the Film and Television Institute of India alumna has been working toward for 17 years.<\/p>\n

\n\tGupta has built a screen career defined by a consistent preference for unconventional material. She is perhaps best known to international audiences for her role in Shonali Bose\u2019s \u201cMargarita with a Straw\u201d and has earned significant recognition on the streaming front through the Prime Video series \u201cFour More Shots Please!\u201d She has also appeared in Anubhav Sinha\u2019s \u201cArticle 15\u201d and the streaming thriller \u201cInside Edge,\u201d with further credits including \u201cPagglait\u201d and \u201cAxone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film follows Smita, an elderly woman in her late sixties who shares an unbreakable bond with a vintage powder-blue Fiat of the same name, as she joins forces with her sharp-witted young granddaughter Tiya. Veteran actor Revathy heads the cast, alongside Daria Bedi and Abhay Kaul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAasmani\u201d is produced by Sayani Gupta Movies, the Sumitra Gupta Foundation for Arts and One India Stories, with Gupta, Nikkhil Advani, Dia Mirza and Ananya Rane serving as executive producers. Co-producers are Paramita Ghosh, Sidharth Meer, Vinit D\u2019Souza, Smriti Kiran and Neeraj Gera.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film represents the first production from the Sumitra Gupta Foundation for Arts, with Advani attached as a key backer. One India Stories, the company launched by Mirza and Rane \u2013 childhood friends turned collaborators \u2013 brings it forward as its second release. The company was founded around a commitment to emotionally resonant storytelling, with an emphasis on elevating voices from outside the mainstream.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe screenplay has accumulated a substantial international track record ahead of the film\u2019s world premiere. Among its script-stage recognitions, it won at the New York Screenplay Competition, the Independent Short Awards LA, the Los Angeles Movie and Music Video Awards, the Cambridge Short Film Festival and F.A.R.O Concurso de Cinema Mediterraneo e Mundial. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, Gupta described the film as the fulfillment of an ambition she has carried since her student days. \u201cMaking a film has been a 17 year long dream ever since I stepped foot into film school,\u201d she said. \u201cAll these years, with every set I\u2019ve been on as an actor, that desire has only grown stronger. In a world ridden with so much chaos and atrocity, cinema can truly act as a medium for discourse, resistance, evocation; and perhaps even a balm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGupta drew on her own memories of formative women in her family to build the film\u2019s characters, working through humor and lightness to explore what she described as substantial emotional terrain. \u201cAasmani is a film about love, companionship and freedom with themes of redundancy, values and loss,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a story about these spunky women (of different age groups) who know their minds and worth. I hope for the film to be a spot of sunshine, love and joy for anyone who watches it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Mirza and Rane, the project exemplifies what One India Stories was built to do \u2013 offer both creative backing and a wider platform to filmmakers working beyond established industry structures, and to stories with genuine emotional weight. The car at the center of the narrative, they noted, carries meaning well beyond its role in the plot, coming to stand for its owner\u2019s sense of self and her quiet refusal to cede control within her own family.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdvani and the Sumitra Gupta Foundation for Arts pointed to Gupta\u2019s track record as an actor \u2013 marked consistently by bold, unconventional choices \u2013 as a clear signal of the filmmaker she brings to this debut.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tSayani Gupta<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indian actor Sayani Gupta is stepping behind the camera for the first time with \u201cAasmani,\u201d a short film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[278456,64,63,134,344,278457],"class_list":{"0":"post-565903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-aasmani","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-sayani-gupta"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}