May 7, 2026<\/p>\n
UPDATE<\/p>\n
Meet four emerging filmmakers :br(s): redefining the art :br(s): form with :br(s): MAMI Select: :br(s): Filmed on iPhone<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s slate of innovative shorts showcases how new tools are changing not just the way films are made, but which stories get told<\/p>\n
In telling the stories of a clandestine affair on the streets of Mumbai, divinity and humanity in Kerala, a young misfit navigating Goa\u2019s vibrant beaches, and a Bengali woman terrified of losing her voice, the emerging auteurs included in this year\u2019s MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone program from the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) harnessed iPhone 17 Pro Max to construct short films with distinct cinematic languages.<\/p>\n
\u201cFilmmaking today is about vision, and iPhone makes it possible for anyone with a strong voice to create something meaningful,\u201d says writer-director Sriram Raghavan, whose 2018 feature, Andhadhun, is one of the most decorated Indian films of the past decade.<\/p>\n
Raghavan served as a mentor for this year\u2019s program, alongside fellow industry luminaries Chaitanya Tamhane, Dibakar Banerjee, and Geetu Mohandas \u2014 winners of accolades from India\u2019s National Film Awards, the Asian Film Awards, the Venice International Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival, to name a few. To make their shorts, filmmakers Shreela Agarwal, Ritesh Sharma, Robin Joy, and Dhritisree Sarkar tapped into the pro camera system, cinema-grade video capabilities, and advanced features of iPhone 17 Pro Max, as well as MacBook Pro with M5 and iPad Pro with M5 for additional support. Watch the four short films on MAMI\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe possibilities iPhone opens up \u2014 in terms of choreography, movement, and ease of access \u2014 are redefining the art form,\u201d says Tamhane, whose features Court (2014) and The Disciple (2020) earned recognition at the Venice Film Festival. \u201cIt helps push the idea of what a film can be.\u201d<\/p>\n With last year\u2019s Seeing Red crossing a million views on YouTube and Kovarty winning Best Short Film at the Bengaluru International Short Film Festival, MAMI Mumbai Film Festival director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur believes the program is having a ripple effect. \u201cThe fact that these films have been captured with iPhone has inspired hundreds of people to go out there and start making short films,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s creating a new generation of filmmakers.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlocking Expression in Motion with iPhone 17 Pro Max<\/p>\n While her peers stepped away from other disciplines to pursue filmmaking, Shreela Agarwal did something stranger. She stepped away from filmmaking itself. A graduate of Singapore\u2019s Lasalle College of the Arts, Agarwal put cinema aside to chase her dream of becoming a boxer. She competed at the national level and won gold.<\/p>\n At the time, it might have felt like a picture-perfect moment \u2014 but it turned out to be the end of her second act. \u201cTwo years ago, I suffered a career-ending injury,\u201d Agarwal explains. \u201cAnd then film pulled me right back in.\u201d<\/p>\n After a friend tipped her off about the MAMI Dimensions Mumbai program, Agarwal\u2019s competitive nature was stoked once more. Fittingly, her first film back was a boxing documentary titled BMCLD. Once again, she won gold.<\/p>\n Her newest film, 11.11 \u2014 \u201ca love letter to Mumbai after dark\u201d \u2014 tells the story of two women on a first date. In the script, her protagonists walk and dance under city streetlights and on dim beaches, presenting challenging lighting conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tested iPhone 17 Pro Max in a very unique way,\u201d says Agarwal. ProRes RAW data capture allowed her team to push the ISO in post-production. The high-performance codec has a wider color gamut with minimal upfront processing. Its wider dynamic range let her team recover details in dark scenes, leading to a significantly brighter and crisper image in comparison to what the naked eye saw on set. Adjusting the tint and white balance also allowed them to homogenize the colors of streetlamps and retain a natural look.<\/p>\n For aspiring filmmakers, the benefits of filming on iPhone aren\u2019t just aesthetic \u2014 they\u2019re also practical, Agarwal explains: \u201cYou don\u2019t need those massive lights that independent filmmakers could never really afford anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n Inspired by Tanztheater \u2014 an expressionistic blend of dance and theater championed by German choreographer Pina Bausch \u2014 with 11.11, Agarwal needed access to a full range of camera motion. iPhone 17 Pro Max allowed her to glide right alongside her actors, and with the camera system\u2019s internal stabilization, she could even climb giant rocks on the beach with them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dynamism and rhythm are only possible because of iPhone,\u201d Agarwal says. \u201cThe freedom, simply put, is unmatched.\u201d<\/p>\n Staging Atmospheric Dream Sequences with Cinematic\u00a0Mode<\/p>\n Growing up in Varanasi \u2014 one of the world\u2019s oldest continuously inhabited cities \u2014 Ritesh Sharma was immersed in a rich tradition of storytelling. He credits his origins as a street theater performer for paving the way for his pivot to filmmaking: \u201cAs an actor, I realized early on the power of directing the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharma \u2014 whose Jhini Bini Chadariya (The Brittle Thread) won Best Debut Film at the New York Indian Film Festival in 2021 \u2014 describes his storytelling style as an exploration of the space between truth and fiction. His MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone entry, She Sells Seashells, follows Maruti, a 17-year-old Rajasthani migrant who sells trinkets on the beach, and her dream of stepping inside an upmarket seaside restaurant in Goa \u2014 a seemingly trivial act that becomes a study in dignity in the director\u2019s capable hands.<\/p>\n iPhone 17 Pro Max allowed Sharma to draw the audience deeper into his protagonist\u2019s mental state. \u201cThere are dreamlike sequences where we see Maruti\u2019s internal world,\u201d he explains. \u201cCinematic mode allows us to shift focus between her reality and what she is feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether he\u2019s filming amid the crashing waves of the Arabian Sea or capturing the chaos of Goa\u2019s carnival, sound design is vital for Sharma. The Audio Mix feature on iPhone 17 Pro Max lets him zero in on the sounds he needs, culling wind and background noise to create a precise aural milieu.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like a moving studio,\u201d he says. \u201cDuring preproduction, I\u2019d record whatever I was hearing with the native mics on iPhone, transfer the file, and edit it right away on MacBook Pro.\u201d On set and during post-production, his team also used Sidecar to convert iPad Pro into a second monitor to review the edit.<\/p>\n Sharma believes iPhone doesn\u2019t just change how cinema is filmed, but also how it\u2019s consumed. \u201cIf you\u2019re watching content on iPhone, like a lot of regular people might do on their daily commute, it fills your vision \u2014 just like in a theater,\u201d he smiles.<\/p>\n Overcoming the Elements with Action Mode<\/p>\n Robin Joy traces his career as a filmmaker back to his local theater collective in Kerala. \u201cWatching the films of Werner Herzog and Giuseppe Tornatore, I realized it\u2019s OK to be a little weird in telling stories,\u201d laughs the Film and Television Institute of India graduate, who served as associate director and dialogue writer on All We Imagine as Light, which was awarded the Grand Prix at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.<\/p>\n Joy\u2019s MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone short, Pathanam (Paradise Fall), tells the story of an angel who collapses in the backyard of an atheist \u2014 and the sociopolitical chaos that ensues.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d been wanting to make this film for a few years, but it felt too ambitious,\u201d explains Joy, referring to the project\u2019s outdoor sets and action sequences. \u201ciPhone 17 Pro Max changed the way we\u2019re approaching it. I can just lock and go.\u201d<\/p>\n The vapor chamber in iPhone 17 Pro Max kept the device running smoothly throughout the course of the grueling 9-to-5 shooting schedule. Action mode kept the frame stable, even as the team was thrown about on a small boat in the middle of a lake. And MacBook Pro kept up with the crew through long days on set and even longer days in post-production. An ambitious plan to edit heavy timelines in 4K, rather than making smaller proxies, was vindicated by the power-efficient performance of M5.<\/p>\n Joy\u2019s most aspirational shot \u2014 an image of the angel unfolding its wings and returning to the heavens \u2014 arrives late in the film. \u201cWe were told it would take three months,\u201d he says. \u201cWe had three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n That gap was bridged by AI-powered mask tracking in Adobe Premiere Pro that let Joy seamlessly edit the prosthetically enhanced character into the scene. Thanks to Neural Accelerators in the GPU on MacBook Pro, object masking runs locally on device with dramatically faster AI performance and tracking.<\/p>\n For Joy, the technology meant that filming the challenging Pathanam wasn\u2019t an act of hubris, but a calculated leap of faith: \u201cBeing able to capture cinematic stories with iPhone \u2014 which is accessible on a daily basis, rather than a camera you rent out once in a while \u2014 lets newer filmmakers explore so many more possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n Delving Deeper with 8x Optical\u00a0Zoom<\/p>\n A Ph.D. scholar specializing in gender and development, Dhritisree Sarkar found her way to filmmaking from economics. \u201cInstead of a thesis about day-to-day human behavior, I\u2019m telling the same story in a different format,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Shot on iPhone 7 during the height of the COVID pandemic, her first short film, Chhaddonam (Pen Name), went on to be acquired by MUBI. \u201cAccessibility is important for a beginner,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can just pick up your phone and shoot whatever story you want to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n Her new film, Kathar Katha (The Tale of Katha), tells the story of a news anchor who has been diagnosed with a rare condition that progressively seals all of her external orifices \u2014 a premise that emerged from a personal moment. Sarkar recalls standing before a mirror when an unexpected thought surfaced: Had she been silent for so long that her mouth was closing?<\/p>\n During trials where prosthetics sealed the eyes and mouth of her actor, Sarkar\u2019s team used the Blackmagic Camera app with Tentacle Sync to transform iPad Pro into a monitor. A hush fell over the crew as they reviewed the performance in close-ups. \u201cThe actor went through such an emotional journey when she was deprived of her senses,\u201d Sarkar recalls. \u201cWhen I saw the footage, I was confident that the audience would feel it too.\u201d<\/p>\n Ever the economist, Sarkar views the micro world through the macro lens. She pushes in close with iPhone to capture the reflection of a luchi, a Bengali bread, puffing up in Katha\u2019s eyeball as an expression of her growing rage. The 8x optical zoom at 200 mm on iPhone 17 Pro Max was also pivotal to depicting the character\u2019s emotion, Sarkar says: \u201cThe trauma isn\u2019t on the outside. It lies within.\u201d<\/p>\n The film\u2019s visual grammar references a generation of women, including Sarkar\u2019s grandmother, who never left the houses they lived in, except at the end of their lives. To evoke that earlier era, Sarkar and her cinematographer created a celluloid look by capturing maximum latitude with ProRes RAW and Apple Log 2, and then pushing the image\u2019s contrast and grain to their limits in post.<\/p>\n Sarkar credits technology like iPhone for democratizing the medium and making room for new narratives. \u201cI felt like I have a story to tell, and I have iPhone,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen no one else will tell my story, why shouldn\u2019t I?\u201d<\/p>\n All four shorts are now available on MAMI\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Press Contacts<\/p>\n Renee Felton<\/p>\n Apple<\/p>\n