Samit Kakkad

Samit Kakkad grew up in Mumbai, right in the thick of things, thanks to his dad Amar Kakkad—yeah, the ad and corporate filmmaker. Samit didn’t just get handed the director’s chair; he hustled behind the scenes, reading up on cinema, shadowing his dad on sets, soaking up everything from ad shoots to documentaries. He kicked things off as an editor, and honestly, he swears there’s no school like a real set or the post-prod grind where you actually see a story get stitched together. With that groundwork, Samit jumped into the big leagues as a producer and creative director with Huppa Huiyaa in 2010. That wasn’t enough though—next, he directed Aayna Ka Bayna in 2012, a dance-heavy flick that didn’t just sit pretty in India. Nope, it got shown at 18 international film festivals and even closed Toronto’s Reel World Film Festival. Plus, it made history by being the first Marathi film dubbed in Hindi for Sony Max. Samit kept the momentum with Half Ticket, a remake of the Tamil film Kaaka Muttai. That one made waves too—screened at 20 festivals, bagged the Ecumenical Jury Award at Zlin International, and got love from critics. Hollywood Reporter called it “predictable but satisfying,” which, hey, that’s not nothing. He then dove into Hindi cinema with Ascharya Chak It, and the web series Indori Ishq, which people genuinely seemed to dig. There’s a whole theme running through his work—he’s obsessed with Mumbai’s gritty side, always peeling back layers of the city’s underbelly. Looking ahead, he’s got 36 Gunn in the pipeline, Topaz (a biopic on bar dancer Sweety), and the Hindi web show Dharavi Bank with Suniel Shetty and Vivek Oberoi. Dude’s definitely not slowing down.