Shakun Batra is an Indian screenwriter, filmmaker and producer. In 2022, he served as director, writer and producer in the Amazon Prime movie Gehraiyaan, starring Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Ananya Pandey.
Wiki/Biography
Shakun Batra was born on Saturday, January 1, 1983, in New Delhi (39 years old; as of 2022). His zodiac sign is Capricorn.
Photos of Shakun Batra as a child
He attended St Xavier’s High School in Delhi. From 2001 to 2004, he studied at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. He then took a course in cinematography at the Vancouver Film School in British Columbia, Canada.
appearance
Height (approximately): 5′4″
Hair color: black
Eye color: black
family
Parents and siblings
His father ran a mosquito repellent machine business. His mother is a philanthropic doctor. Shakun has a brother and a sister. His brother Shubham Batra is an architect.
wife
He is not married yet.
Relationships/Affairs
In 2013, there were rumors that Shakun was dating Indian director Sonam Nair.
Shakun Batra and Sonam Nair
Profession
He became interested in photography as a teenager and then began working as a nature photographer. After completing a course in cinematography, he began assisting several Indian directors in Bombay, including Errol Morris and Christopher Wilchar. He has worked with various production houses in India such as Equinox Films, Excel Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. and Dharma Productions. In 2012, he made his directorial and screenwriting debut in the Hindi film Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, starring Kareena Kapoor and Emraan Khan. After a gap of almost four years, he worked as director and screenwriter in the Hindi film Kapoor and Sons (2016), which was one of the superhit films of the year.
Shakun Batra and Rishi Kapoor on the sets of Kapoor & Sons
In 2021, he served as writer-director and executive producer on the Hindi documentary Finding Sheela.
Finding Sheila Documentary Poster
The Shakun-directed film Gehraiyaan will be released on Amazon Prime in 2022. He also served as a writer and producer on the film. In addition to films, he has directed a number of television commercials for Google, Head & Shoulders and Nestlé.
Awards
- 2016: Melbourne Indian Film Festival – Hindi film “Kapoor & Sons” wins People’s Choice Award
- 2017: Hindi film “Kapoor & Sons” wins Filmfare Awards for Best Story and Best Screenplay
- 2017: Indian film “Kapoor and Sons” wins IIFA Award for Best Story
- 2017: Hindi film Kapoor & Sons wins Stardust Award for Best Story
- 2017: Hindi film “Kapoor & Sons” wins Zee Cine Award for Best Story
Favorites
- Novel: “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen
- Film Director: Woody Allen
- Movies: Monsoon Wedding (2001) and Dil Chahta Hai (2001)
Facts/Trivia
- After graduation, he wanted to pursue a graduate degree in the United States, but was denied a visa. He then enrolled in a cinematography course in Canada. Initially, his parents were reluctant for him to pursue a career in cinematography, but he later asked for a year to do something in the field.
- Shakun Batra is a master of guitar playing.
Shakun Batra plays guitar
- In an interview, he shared that the inspiration behind the story of the Hindi film Kapoor and Sons (2016) came from his own family. He said.
The whole family is like this. They are chaotic and always moving. Even when members are fighting, they move between rooms. I feel like we have never seen this in Hindi cinema and for me it became an exciting challenge. I thought it would be fun if I could put together a scene like this, and, if you think back to the scene with the plumber, you’ll know exactly what I’m referring to. I have seen my relatives behave like this. I lived in a joint family for the first eight years of my life, so it was always chaotic. The house is filled with events, parties and other grand happenings. I had seen scenes like this in Monsoon Wedding – they were so beautiful and fluid, so I wanted to bring that element in. “
He further revealed that the late Indian actor Rishi Kapoor was not happy while filming the movie “Kapoor and Sons”. In a 2016 interview, Rishi Kapoor shared the reason behind it, saying,
I was not happy working at Shakun Batra in Kapoor & Sons. You see I worked on this film for 30-32 days. Not a day goes by that Shakun and I don’t fight. This is not a creative battle. This is something else. We had a fight because I didn’t agree with the way he was playing my character. Shakun wanted to shoot every shot of me from multiple different angles. But I’m an old-school spontaneous actor. I couldn’t recreate the same expression multiple times for each shot. I respect all acting genres. But I’m not a method actor. With each successive shot, I lost my spontaneity. This new way of working, in which actors shoot the same shot repeatedly from different angles, has gained acceptance because in the digital age there is no waste of raw material. Because they can edit movies on digital platforms, they need more software. Actors thus become robots. “
- In 2022, while talking about the intimate scenes in Gehraiyaan, a film he directed, he said;
I’ve been reading about intimacy in the post-MeToo world of the West. I want to encourage this kind of safety and security system. I want actors to feel mentally and emotionally in a safer environment. We did intimacy workshops, which were not too different from theater workshops. They are trust-building exercises to ensure everyone understands and agrees to each other’s boundaries. I’m glad I did it.
He added,
This longing for an urban environment no longer felt real to me. There was a time when New York and London felt like worlds we wanted to know and understand because it felt so much better than our world. But today, with the information we have access to, we know a lot about someone’s life, at least on the surface. “
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education