MIT alumnus turns filmmaker, to debut at Cannes film fest

Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) alumnus Bhaskar Upadhyaya, who left his IT job to pursue filmmaking, has made a mark for himself in only two years.

Tez, his debut short film, received an official selection in the sixth Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival and the 16th International Film Festival, Jaipur and will also be exhibited in the ‘Short Film Corner’ Section of the 69th Cannes International Film Festival on May 15.

Bhaskar, a budding Indian film director and the founder of Eastern Green Pictures, was a Computer Science student at MIT in the 2008-12 batch.

Tez is a story of a father who abandons his newborn girl child as he hoped for a boy. However, the world turns topsy-turvy for the father when realisation dawns on him. Having already received recognition, Bhaskar is at work on yet another film ULKA, a full length Assamese feature film.

After engineering graduation, Bhaskar did a short stint with Honeywell first and then Oracle in Brngaluru.

“I worked as an engineer for Honeywell Aerospace and Oracle after my college, it was at that point of time that the entrepreneurship bug bit me. While studying at Manipal, maturity at work got a solid boost and my thought process gradually got structured,” he said.

“I think, for any idea to be conveyed to the masses, audio-visual is a very strong medium,” Bhaskar added.

“As a youngster, I’ve always had this craving for movies and would watch with a critic’s eye. When I was in the 11th standard, I attended a film festival in the Siri Fort Auditorium in Delhi. That urge deep inside me started surfacing gradually and I decided to bite the bait when I was working at Oracle. My upbringing was very positive I feel now. I give all credit to my parents who instilled such a lot of confidence in me to move on in life,” Bhaskar quipped.