Shri. Vivek Agnihotri

Shri Vivek Agnihotri is a National award-winning filmmaker and cultural ambassador of Hindi Cinema known for his unique directorial approach coupled with powerful storytelling. His directorial debut was Chocolate (2005). He worked on a series of films until he hit his major commercial and critical breakthrough in The Tashkent Files (2019). The film was a sleeper hit and earned him the National Film Award for Best Screenplay–Dialogues.

Shri. Agnihotri followed with The Kashmir Files (2022), one of the top-grossing Indian movies of the year. He became a path breaker of modern Bollywood with this historic feat, receiving the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration as well as several nominations for Filmfare. His following venture, the medical drama, The Vaccine War (2023), did not do well at the box office, but it rightly demonstrated his desire and determination to tread less-populated, diverse territories in storytelling.

Aside from being a filmmaker, Shri. Agnihotri has been a board member at India’s Central Board of Film Certification and a cultural ambassador of Indian Cinema at the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. His career in advertising and television — including celebrated serials like “Twin Peaks” and “The X-Files” as a director, and creative campaigns for clients including Gillette and Coca-Cola — laid a solid foundation for his cinematic career. His writing, particularly Urban Naxals: The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam, has generated a fair discourse.

Shri. Vivek Agnihotri’s old-school but bold storytelling, along with critical appreciation and a series of high-profile awards, continues to redefine the new-age Indian cinema.