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India has many regional film centres, such as Bollywood (Hindi) in Mumbai, Marathi cinema in Pune Telugu cinema in Hyderabad, Tamil cinema in Chennai, Malayalam cinema in Kochi, Kannada cinema in Bangalore, Odia Cinema in Bhubaneswar, Assamese cinema in Guwahati and Bengali cinema in Kolkata . Most Indian film directors are known for their work with one regional industry, while many others are active directors of films from multiple industries.
Directors of parallel or independent cinema
Parallel Cinema is otherwise known as "Art films" cinema, and is known for its serious and realistic films with real-life situations. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Indian government financed a number of such films, on Indian themes. Many of the directors were graduates of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Ritwik Ghatak was a professor at the institute and a well-known director in his own right. The best-known Indian "neo-realist" is Satyajit Ray.
- AR Murugadoss
- Adoor Gopalakrishnan
- Ajita Suchitra Veera
- Amit Dutta
- Anurag Kashyap
- Aparna Sen
- G Aravindan
- Bala
- K. Balachander
- Biju Viswanath
- Bimal Roy
- Budhdhadeb Dasgupta
- T. V. Chandran
- Dadasaheb Phalke
- Dasari Narayana Rao
- Dedipya Joshii
- Dibakar Banerjee
- Ganesh Acharya
- Girish Kasaravalli
- Govind Nihalani
- Harpreet Sandhu
- Jabbar Patel
- Jahnu Barua
- Joe Rajan
- John Abraham (Director)
- Kalpana Lajmi
- Kundan Shah
- Mani Ratnam
- Mira Nair
- Mrinal Sen
- Onir
- Partho Sen-Gupta
- Piyush Jha
- Prakash Jha
- Puttanna Kanagal
- L. V. Prasad
- Puneet Sira
- T. K. Rajeev Kumar
- K. Raghavendra Rao
- Ram Gopal Varma
- Raju Kafley
- B. N. Reddy
- Rahul Dholakia
- Rituparno Ghosh
- Ritwik Ghatak
- S. Shankar
- Saeed Akhtar Mirza
- Sathish Kalathil
- Satyajit Ray
- Satyaprakash Upadhyay
- Shaji N. Karun
- V. Shantaram
- Shyam Benegal
- Sonali Gulati
- Sridhar Rangayan
- Sudhir Mishra
- Suresh Joachim
- Tapan Sinha
- Tigmanshu Dhulia
- Upendra
- Vijayakrishnan
- Vierendrra Lalit
- Vijay Singh
- Kasinadhuni Viswanath
- Raju Kafley
- Zoya Akhtar
Active in multiple languages
The following is a list of film directors who have directed films from more than one regional film industry in India. This does not include directors who work in a single industry whose films have been dubbed into other languages.
| DIRECTOR | Assamese | Bengali | Bhojpuri | English | Gujarati | Hindi | Kannada | Malayalam | Marathi | Maithili | Odia | Punjabi | Tamil | Telugu |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ram Gopal Varma | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||||||
| K. Raghavendra Rao | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||||||||
| Dasari Narayana Rao | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| S. S. Rajamouli | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Puri Jagannadh | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||
| S. Shankar | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||||||||
| Bharathan | Yes | |||||||||||||
| Basu Bhattacharya | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Gautham Menon | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||||||||
| Girish Karnad | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Girish Kasaravalli | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Mani Ratnam | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||
| AR Murugadoss | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||||||||
| Puttanna Kanagal | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Satish Rajwade | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Sachin Kundalkar | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Prasanta Nanda | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||||||||
| Hara Patnaik | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||||||||
| Radha Bharadwaj | ||||||||||||||
| Siddique | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||||||||||
| P.Vasu | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Sunil Kumar Desai | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Mahesh Manjrekar | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Upendra | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||||||||
| Aarun Nagar | Yes |
Bengali film directors
- Hiralal Sen
- Dhirendranath Gangopadhyay (D. G.)
- Sisir Bhaduri
- J. J. Madan
- Madhu Bose
- Niranjan Pal
- Premankur Atorthy
- Prafulla Ghosh
- Bimal Roy
- Pramathesh Barua
- Satyajit Ray
- Ritwik Ghatak
- Satyen Bose
- Mrinal Sen
- Hiren Nag
- Nitin Bose
- Tulsi Lahiri
- Hemen Gupta
- Agradoot
- Naresh Mitra
- Yatrik
- Chitta Bose
- Niren Lahiri
- Ajoy Kar
- Satyen Bose
- Subodh Mitra
- Amar Choudhury
- Haridas Bhattacharya
- Tapan Sinha
- Prafulla Chakraborty
- Asit Sen
- Manju Dey
- Salil Dutta
- Alamgir Kabir
- Buddhadev Dasgupta
- Tarun Majumdar
- Utpal Dutta
- Dilip Ray
- Goutam Ghose
- Basu Chatterjee
- Rituparno Ghosh
- Aparna Sen
- Chidananda Dasgupta
- Prabhat Roy
- Anjan Choudhury
- Shakti Samanta
- Saroj Dey
- Ashoke Viswanathan
- Raja Sen
- Sandip Ray
- Sukhen Das
- Bratya Basu
- Kaushik Ganguly
- Bappaditya Bandopadhyay
- Arjun Chakraborty
- Suman Mukhopadhyay
- Kushal Chakraborty
- Srijit Mukherji
- Basu Bhattacharya
- Sekhar Das
- Atanu Ghosh
- Anjan Dutt
- Goutam Halder
- Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
- Abhijit Guha
- Sudeshna Roy
- Kamaleshwar Mukherjee
- Gaurav Pandey
- Aditya Vikram Sengupta
- Haranath Chakraborty
- Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri
- Sujit Mondal
- Raj Chakraborty
- Swapan Saha
- Nandita Roy
- Shiboprosad Mukherjee
- Sujit Guha
- Qaushiq Mukherjee
- Aniket Chattopadhaya
- Tathagata Mukherjee
- Ravi Kinagi
- Narugopal Mandal
Gujrati film directors
- Abhishek Jain
- Chandulal Shah
- Dhwani Gautam
- Govindbhai Patel
- Ketan Mehta
- Nanubhai Vakil
- Shantilal Soni
- Sooni Taraporevala
- Zanane Rajsingh
Kannada film directors
- Puttanna Kanagal
- Upendra
- Yograj Bhat
- Duniya Soori
- Pawan Kumar
- Kichcha Sudeepa
- Rakshit Shetty
- Dinesh Baboo
- Nagathihalli Chandrasekhar
- B Ramamurthy
- Dorai-Bhagavan
- G. V. Iyer
- B. S. Ranga
- V. Somashekhar
- Kashinath
- Girish Kasaravalli
- Girish Karnad
- S. V. Rajendra Singh Babu
- D. Rajendra Babu
- Sunil Kumar Desai
- Om Prakash Rao
- Baraguru Ramachandrappa
- Shankar Nag
- Prem
- V. Ravichandran
- Preetham Gubbi
- R. Chandru
- A. M. R. Ramesh
- S. Narayan
- Dayal Padmanabhan
- Abhaya Simha
- P. Vasu
- Rishab Shetty
- Mohan Shankar
- Shashank
- Agni Shridhar
- Jayatheertha
- Vinay Bharadwaj
- Prashanth Neel
- Anup Bhandari
- T. S. Nagabharana
- H. R. Bhargava
Malayalam film directors
- Ranjith
- John Abraham
- Aashiq Abu
- G. Aravindan
- Sathish Kalathil
- Sathyan Anthikkad
- Dinesh Baboo
- Priyadarshan
- P. A. Backer
- Bharathan
- T. V. Chandran
- Lal Jose
- T. K. Rajeev Kumar
- Fazil
- Adoor Gopalakrishnan
- K. G. George
- Hariharan
- Kamal
- Shaji Karun
- K. P. Kumaran
- Lal
- Lohithadas
- Joy Mathew
- Anjali Menon
- Balachandra Menon
- Gautham Menon
- P.N. Menon
- Mohan
- K. R. Mohanan
- M. T. Vasudevan Nair
- Amal Neerad
- P. Padmarajan
- Rajesh Pillai
- Dileesh Pothan
- Priyadarsan
- Alphonse Putharen
- Lenin Rajendran
- Anwar Rasheed
- Rajeev Ravi
- V.R. Sankar
- I. V. Sasi
- K. S. Sethumadhavan
- Shyamaprasad
- Siddique
- Sreenivasan
- Sameer Thahir
- Vijayakrishnan
- A. Vincent
- Rajasenan
- Shaji Kailas
- K. Madhu
- Joshiy
- Vineeth Sreenivasan
Marathi film directors
- Satish Motling
- Baburao Painter
- Shyam Benegal
- Jabbar Patel
- V. Shantaram
- Dadasaheb Phalke
- Dada Kondke
- Amol Palekar
- Nishikant Kamat
- Mahesh Kothare
- Sachin Pilgaonkar
- Mahesh Manjrekar
- Gajendra Ahire
- Pralhad Keshav Atre
- Ravi Jadhav
- P. L. Deshpande
- Satyadev Dubey
- Chandrakant Kulkarni
- Sachin Kundalkar
- Paresh Mokashi
- Bhalji Pendharkar
- Raja Paranjape
- Ram Gabale
- Ramesh Deo
- Satish Rajwade
- Sayaji Shinde
- Sanjay Surkar
- Suryakant Mandhare
- Smita Talwalkar
- Mrinal Kulkarni
- Dadasaheb Torne
- Vijay Gokhale
- Vishnupant Damle
- Sujay Dahake
- Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni
- Avdhoot Gupte
- Nitin Chandrakant Desai
- Ashutosh Gowarikar
- Amol Palekar
- Madhur Bhandarkar
- Amol Gupte
- Sandeep Sawant
- Anand Patwardhan
- Bhagwan Dada
- Master Vinayak
- N. Chandra
- Kunal Deshmukh
- Vishram Sawant
- Abhinay Deo
- Gauri Shinde
- Nagraj Manjule
- Dinkar D. Patil
Tamil film directors
- Thangar Bachan
- C. V. Sridhar
- A. P. Nagarajan
- A. C. Tirulokchandar
- K. Balachander
- Balu Mahendra
- J. Mahendran
- Bharathiraja
- Bharathan
- A. Bhimsingh
- S. P. Muthuraman
- S. A. Chandrasekhar
- Bhagyaraj
- T. Rajendar
- P. Vasu
- Suresh Krissna
- K. S. Ravikumar
- Mani Ratnam
- S. Shankar
- Vetrimaaran
- Atlee
- Lokesh Kanagaraj
- AR Murugadoss
- Seenu Ramasamy
- Selvaraghavan
- Thiagarajan Kumararaja
- Bala
- Karthik Subbaraj
- Nalan Kumarasamy
- Gautham Menon
- M. Raja
- Vasanthabalan
- Ram
- S. J. Surya
- R. Ajay Gnanamuthu
- Karthick Naren
- Kamal Haasan
- Balaji Sakthivel
- K. V. Anand
- P. C. Sreeram
- Jeeva
- Rajiv Menon
- Santosh Sivan
- Vijay Milton
- Dharani
- Hari
- Ameer Sultan
- Agathian
- S. P. Jananathan
- Mysskin
- Prabu Solomon
- Pandiraj
- Siruthai Siva
- Pa. Ranjith
- Samuthirakani
- Sasikumar
- Sasi
- R. K. Selvamani
- Ezhil
- Saran
- Prabhu Deva
- Dhanush
- Silambarasan
- Suseenthiran
- Venkat Prabhu
- Vishnuvardhan
- Vikraman
Telugu film directors
- Surender Reddy
- Krishna Vamsi
- Ram Gopal Varma
- Teja (film director)
- Adurthi Subba Rao
- Priyadarshan
- R. Narayana Murthy
- Nandamuri Taraka Ramarao
- Bapu
- K. Vijaya Bhaskar
- Bhaskar
- YVS Chowdary
- Prabhu Deva
- Gunasekhar
- Jandhyala
- Puri Jagannadh
- Muppalaneni Shiva
- A. Karunakaran
- Sekhar Kammula
- S. V. Krishna Reddy
- Raghava Lawrence
- Neelakanta
- L. V. Prasad
- C. Pullaiah
- Vedantam Raghavaiah
- S. S. Rajamouli
- B. S. Ranga
- Dasari Narayana Rao
- Krishna Chaitanya (lyricist)
- K. Raghavendra Rao
- Katta Subba Rao
- S.Shivgopal Krishna
- A. Kodandarami Reddy
- Trivikram Srinivas
- Sukumar
- G. C. Sekhar
- Dr. K. Vishwanath
- Chandra Sekhar Yeleti
- Harish Shankar
- Koratala Siva
- Boyapati Srinu
- Anil Ravipudi
- Srikanth Addala
- B. V. Nandini Reddy
- Ajay Bhupathi
Jammu and Kashmir film directors
- Mir Sarwar