Amit Dutta is a filmmaker and writer whose work draws on primary research, literary adaptation, fiction, documentation, video diaries, and animation. His films often move between forms to find a personal approach suited to each subject.

His body of work explores how perception can be shaped by memory and place, as well as by inherited forms of knowledge. Cinema, in this practice, becomes a tool for subtle enquiry and a way of weaving attention. His enquiry often develops through cinema’s relationship with other arts and draws on ideas from philosophy, art history and lived experience. His practice brings different artistic traditions and forms of knowledge into the same field of attention without placing them in a fixed hierarchy. Each film develops its own language from the material it encounters, allowing research and intuition to determine its form.

His works have been exhibited at major international film festivals and art institutions, including the Venice, Berlin, Rotterdam, Toronto (Wavelengths), Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), and Oberhausen film festivals; and at museums such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris), MoMA (New York), and the Smithsonian’s Freer & Sackler Gallery (Washington DC). Retrospectives of his work have been held at institutions including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Cinema Du Reel, Centre Pompidou, Smithsonian’s Freer & Sackler Gallery (Washington DC) and the National Film Archive of India.

His works have received a wide range of national and international honors, including the Golden Gateway Award at the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), the Gold Mikeldi at the Bilbao International Film Festival (Spain), the Golden Conch and Best Film of the Festival at MIFF, awards from the ‘International Federation of Film Critics’ (FIPRESCI) and the Federation of Film Societies of India (Kerala), as well as the Jury’s Main Prize at Oberhausen (Germany); four National Film Awards in various categories (Silver Lotus); Special Jury Mentions at Cinéma du Réel (France) and the Venice International Film Festival (Italy); and the Dogra Ratan state honor (2013). Two of his screenplays have been supported by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (France) and the Hubert Bals Fund (Netherlands). In 2015, he was awarded the Tagore Fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla. His short film Kramasha was listed among the essential films of all time by Jonathan Rosenbaum, while Nainsukh was featured in Film Comment’s top ten films of the Venice Film Festival and listed in The New Yorker’s selection of best biopics ever made.

The published books include Invisible Webs: An Art-Historical Inquiry into the Life and Death of Jangarh Singh Shyam; Kaljayi Kambakht, recipient of the Krishna Baldev Vaid Award and shortlisted for the Armory Square Prize; and Gyarah Rupay Ka Fountain Pen, which was included in the Tata Trusts’ Parag Honours List 2022 as one of the best books for children, promoting high-quality children’s literature in India. He contributes regularly to Hindi literary and children’s journals, and has published works on traditional water systems, and personal film diaries.

He has taught at the Film and Television Institute of India and the National Institute of Design.