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April 15, 2025<\/p>\n
UPDATE<\/p>\n
Meet four emerging filmmakers bending cultural and creative lines\u00a0with iPhone\u00a016\u00a0Pro\u00a0Max<\/p>\n
The talent behind this year\u2019s MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone projects delve into how India\u2019s varied landscapes and cultures shaped their shorts<\/p>\n
Writer, director, and actor Konkona Sen Sharma believes that beyond technology, a filmmaker\u2019s most important tool is courage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith iPhone, there\u2019s so much power contained in such a compact package that you can bypass the conventions of mainstream filmmaking,\u201d says Sen Sharma, a two-time winner of India\u2019s National Film Awards. \u201cAll you need is a great idea, and the guts and determination to follow through with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alongside fellow Indian film industry icons Vikramaditya Motwane, Lijo Jose Pellissery, and Vetri Maaran, Sen Sharma is mentoring four emerging filmmakers selected by the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image (MAMI) to create short films for the 2025 MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone program.<\/p>\n
Now in its second year, the program empowers MAMI alumni to push the boundaries of technology and innovation, shooting their projects on iPhone 16 Pro Max and editing them on MacBook Pro with M4 Max. Two of last year\u2019s participating films recently won 2025 Critics\u2019 Choice Awards India for Best Short Film, Best Director (Short Film), and Best Writing (Short Film).<\/p>\n
\u201cShooting on iPhone allows for complete personal expression,\u201d says Maaran, writer-director of the upcoming Tamil action thriller Vaadivaasal<\/em>. He believes he is learning as much from his mentees as he is teaching them. \u201cWe\u2019re living in the age of democracy in filmmaking.\u201d<\/p>\n This year\u2019s MAMI Select filmmakers \u2014 Amrita Bagchi, Rohin Raveendran Nair, Chanakya Vyas, and Shalini Vijayakumar \u2014 are discovering new cinematic worlds through the lens of iPhone 16 Pro Max.<\/p>\n \u201cThe unique voices of these filmmakers are beautifully contextualized through the four languages and regions of India in which they are rooted,\u201d says MAMI festival director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are very passionate people with important stories to tell,\u201d says Pellissery, the filmmaker behind Malayalam features like Ee.Ma.Yau. <\/em>and Jallikattu<\/em>. \u201cShooting on iPhone, they are pushing their own limits with fantastic results.\u201d<\/p>\n Each filmmaker leveraged the powerful capabilities of MacBook Pro with the M4 Max chip to weave their stories together. \u201cShooting and editing within the Apple family of products gives you a stellar advantage: speed,\u201d says writer-director Motwane, whose work in film and television includes Udaan<\/em> and Black Warrant<\/em>.<\/p>\n That lightning-fast performance of MacBook Pro alongside the ease of use of iPhone 16 Pro Max is giving these artists even more creative control on and off set.<\/p>\n Navigating childhood and change, legacy, and liberation, Bagchi, Nair, Vyas, and Vijayakumar recently premiered their stories in Mumbai.<\/p>\n Creating Claustrophobia with Cinematic\u00a0Mode<\/strong><\/p>\n With a background in design, acting, singing, and songwriting, Amrita Bagchi feels she was always destined to be a filmmaker. \u201cIt\u2019s like a confluence of all the art forms,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Bagchi, whose short film Succulent <\/em>won the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles in 2022, hails from Kolkata, the city in West Bengal, India, that has produced cinematic stalwarts like Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen. It\u2019s also the home of many a spooky story.<\/p>\n Her new short film, Tinctoria<\/em>, is a psychological thriller inspired by an actual historical event: the indigo revolt that arose in Bengal in 1859. It tells the story of a modern-day fashion mogul whose ancestral legacy is built on the skeletons of indigo farmers from the colonial era \u2014 the ghosts of whom quite literally come back to haunt her.<\/p>\n To create the immersive, claustrophobic atmosphere of a thriller, Bagchi is engaging Cinematic mode for the film\u2019s opening montage. \u201cWe\u2019re tracking bubbles and plastic sheets flying through the air, and the depth of field is so clean,\u201d she says. \u201cJust like it\u2019s shot on a huge, high-budget cinematic camera.\u201d<\/p>\n Bagchi believes her film could never have been shot through traditional means.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very ambitious production, but with iPhone 16 Pro Max, I can constantly create and improvise,\u201d she says. \u201cThat edginess of movement, it\u2019s like visual rap.\u201d<\/p>\n With graphically demanding workflows \u2014 like overlaying the industry-standard Rec. 709 color space on ProRes Log footage captured on iPhone \u2014 she is surprised that her M4 Max MacBook Pro hasn\u2019t lagged once.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like a rocket machine,\u201d she says. \u201cOn a tight schedule I can just shoot at 4K120 fps on my iPhone, and still have tremendous flexibility to change the pacing during the edit on my MacBook Pro.\u201d<\/p>\n The theme of legacy runs strong with Bagchi, and not just in her film. \u201cWe want to emulate pioneers like Satyajit Ray. He didn\u2019t let the conventions of his time dictate his story,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n ProRes Paints a Coastal Canvas<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cEven though I grew up in New Delhi, I\u2019ve always been exposed to Kerala\u2019s brave, daring cinema,\u201d says Rohin Raveendran Nair, a director, writer, and cinematographer whose credits include Netflix shows like Sacred Games<\/em> and Black Warrant<\/em>.<\/p>\n Nair\u2019s short film Kovarty<\/em> takes him back to his roots in the coastal city of Alleppey. A love story tinged with magical realism, it showcases the relationship between a typewriter and typist. Qwerty, as the typewriter is christened, is slowly transformed by the lilting local accent into Kovarty<\/em>. This acts as a metaphor for the film\u2019s major theme: change.<\/p>\n The prospect of shooting on iPhone 16 Pro Max was instrumental in Nair\u2019s choice of narrative. \u201cUsing iPhone\u2019s small form factor, I could place the camera inside the typewriter and capture its POV,\u201d he says. \u201cThis, along with practical effects with fish wires, helps bring the device to life.\u201d<\/p>\n Nair is framing his point of view shots in a 4:3 aspect ratio to emulate the verticality of a sheet of paper. These are juxtaposed against a wider 2:1 aspect ratio when capturing the expansive backwater landscapes. For some old-world charm, he also uses a bloom filter to create a halo around the highlights.<\/p>\n Nair believes iPhone 16 Pro Max will complement Alleppey\u2019s vivid blue-greens.<\/p>\n \u201cOne day our location is bright and sunny, the next it\u2019s cloudy and gloomy,\u201d he says. \u201cThe camera captures such rich detail with ProRes Log in all sorts of lighting situations.\u201d<\/p>\n Action Mode Helps Cut Through the Noise<\/strong><\/p>\n For his new short film Mangya<\/em>, educator and thespian Chanakya Vyas found inspiration in an unusual place. \u201cIt may seem obsolete, but a newspaper is a great place to discover stories,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Vyas \u2014 whose short film Loo<\/em> was nominated for Best Short Film (Narrative) at the New York Indian Film Festival \u2014 went down a rabbit hole after reading an article about an avian flu outbreak in suburban Mumbai. That, combined with the devastating loss of his golden retriever, inspired his new short film.<\/p>\n Mangya<\/em> is a coming-of-age tale about an 11-year-old boy and his pet, the titular rooster. \u201cLosing a pet is very different from the loss of another person,\u201d muses Vyas. \u201cWhat started out as a story about a lonely boy, eventually became one about letting go.\u201d<\/p>\n For a key scene in the film, Vyas is tracking his actor for 1,000 feet just before the break of dawn.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no time to mount the camera on a traditional gimbal,\u201d he says. \u201cBut with Action mode, I could even shoot multiple takes. The stabilization is just so impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n Recording clean sound in a country as loud as India can be tricky, but Vyas is incorporating the cacophony into his milieu.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re able to layer footsteps, the rooster crowing, and the whirring sound of a fan with distinct clarity with the studio-quality mics on iPhone 16 Pro Max,\u201d he says. \u201cThe native audio is that good in its bit rate and cadence.\u201d<\/p>\n Out amid the chicken coops while on set, Vyas relies on the nano-texture display of his MacBook Pro, which dramatically reduces glare and distractions from reflections coming from the overhead sun as he reviews the continuity of his shots. Nano-texture is a game-changing experience when working outdoors.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a director, the most important thing is how the footage will turn out,\u201d Vyas says. \u201cThankfully the Liquid Retina XDR display on my MacBook Pro gives me an accurate representation of the actual colors we will see in the finished version.\u201d<\/p>\n Screaming in Slow Motion<\/strong><\/p>\n Growing up in a traditional Tamil-speaking home in Chennai, filmmaker Shalini Vijayakumar loved hearing stories about her mother\u2019s large family. \u201cSome used to be funny, others were sad,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cSome were about an uncle who used to talk to ghosts,\u201d she continues. \u201cAs a 6-year-old, I would imagine myself in my mom\u2019s place \u2014 full of stories to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n Her influences all come together in her new short film, Seeing Red<\/em>, a comedic horror film about the quashed emotions of the women in a large Tamil household.<\/p>\n Set in the 1980s, the film begins with three different women screaming in horror after seeing a ghost. It ends with them screaming to express a collective, repressed rage. \u201cIt\u2019s like a journey from being scared to being angry,\u201d she says. \u201cThe actors enjoy just getting to shout at the top of their lungs. And I scream with them because I\u2019m also letting it all out.\u201d<\/p>\n To depict the scream, Vijayakumar is inverting a traditionally masculine visual device from Tamil cinema using iPhone 16 Pro Max. \u201cI call these the \u2018mass shots\u2019 where the heroes walk dramatically in slow motion,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m doing that for the women in 4K120 fps, and it looks fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n For more tightly framed shots, the 120 mm lens on iPhone 16 Pro Max allows her to bring together her narrative, staging, and theme in a single shot that she composed using Procreate on iPad.<\/p>\n \u201cUsing the 5x Telephoto lens, I\u2019m able to place the men in front as they discuss the fate of the women in the background,\u201d Vijayakumar explains. \u201cThere\u2019s so much storytelling in that one frame through that particular lens.\u201d<\/p>\n For all the complexities of theme, technology, and technique, both Vijayakumar and Seeing Red<\/em> possess an ephemeral lightness of spirit. \u201cMy hope is that everyone has fun and remembers that women screamed in it!\u201d<\/p>\n Vikramaditya Motwane, the award-winning director and program mentor, is convinced the four MAMI Select filmmakers can carry forward the legacy of visionaries like Orson Welles and Satyajit Ray. \u201cThese filmmakers can be the pioneers who take the camera to places we\u2019ve never seen before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Watch these four short films on the <\/em>MAMI YouTube channel<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Press Contacts<\/p>\n Renee Felton<\/p>\n Apple<\/p>\n