Indian actor Sayani Gupta is stepping behind the camera for the first time with “Aasmani,” a short film she has written, directed and produced.
The project marks a milestone the Film and Television Institute of India alumna has been working toward for 17 years.
Gupta 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’s “Margarita with a Straw” and has earned significant recognition on the streaming front through the Prime Video series “Four More Shots Please!” She has also appeared in Anubhav Sinha’s “Article 15” and the streaming thriller “Inside Edge,” with further credits including “Pagglait” and “Axone.”
The 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.
“Aasmani” 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’Souza, Smriti Kiran and Neeraj Gera.
The 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 – childhood friends turned collaborators – 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.
The screenplay has accumulated a substantial international track record ahead of the film’s 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.
In a statement, Gupta described the film as the fulfillment of an ambition she has carried since her student days. “Making a film has been a 17 year long dream ever since I stepped foot into film school,” she said. “All these years, with every set I’ve 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.”
Gupta drew on her own memories of formative women in her family to build the film’s characters, working through humor and lightness to explore what she described as substantial emotional terrain. “Aasmani is a film about love, companionship and freedom with themes of redundancy, values and loss,” she said. “It’s 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.”
For Mirza and Rane, the project exemplifies what One India Stories was built to do – 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’s sense of self and her quiet refusal to cede control within her own family.
Advani and the Sumitra Gupta Foundation for Arts pointed to Gupta’s track record as an actor – marked consistently by bold, unconventional choices – as a clear signal of the filmmaker she brings to this debut.
Sayani Gupta
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