ABOUT ME
Sanjib Dey is a film director and a screenwriter who made his feature debut with the critically acclaimed multi-lingual film "III Smoking Barrels".
The film had its world premiere at the 38th Durban Film Festival in South Africa. It was nominated for the prestigious "Grand Newcomer Award" at the 66th International Film Festival of Mannheim-Heidelberg in Germany (2017) and for the "Youth Cinema Award" at the 26th Varna International Film Festival in Bulgaria (2018). Sanjib won the "Best Narrative Feature Award" at the 12th Mexico International Film Festival (2018). The film has travelled around 20 film festivals; won 6 awards and 16 nominations. It was distributed in India by Panorama Studios and in Italy by Pantera FIlms. III Smoking Barrels is presently streaming on Netflix for a global audience.
Sanjib was born to middle-class parents in Golaghat, Assam, India. His father was a businessman, who was also a devoted folk musician and his mother, a simple housewife. His grandfather was known to have been an accomplished tabla player and once owned a Jatra dal (folk theatre group) in Sylhet which is in present Bangladesh. So Sanjib’s lineage, consequently, has been an instinctive source of inspiration for his love for cinema.
After completing his schooling from Sacred Heart School in Golaghat, he moved to the capital city of India and completed his graduation from the University of Delhi. Then he joined an advertising agency there followed by a television show as an apprentice. He later moved from Delhi to Mumbai in search of work that he always yearned for.
Sanjib has been working in various capacities in Mumbai Film and Television industry for more than a decade now. He started his career under Sunil Ghosh, a veteran ad-filmmaker and an FTII-Pune alumnus. Sanjib has also worked with other prominent filmmakers like Govind Nihalani, Habib Faisal, R. Sarath, Shekhar Ghosh and more recently, Australian director Sean Lynch for an international action-based television series in Afghanistan called Eagle Four. The series comprised talents from across the globe and won Seoul International Drama Award in 2011. As an assistant director, Sanjib has worked in Hindi feature films like Sooper Se Ooper, The Desire, Black Forest among others. He also assisted in popular Hindi TV series Kareena Kareena along with few non-fiction shows and TV commercials. He has worked for a few popular Pakistani TV shows and a film too.
Before turning into a fiction director, Sanjib directed a few non- fiction TV shows like Houzee, Dhano Bole Toh etc. He has also had a stint at the ZEE Entertainment group.
His short film A Reasonable Compromise, which he has written and directed, was screened at various film festivals including Court Metrage – Short Film Corner, Cannes 2012, Kolkata International Film Festival etc, Another short film The 100 Watt Bulb, which he’d produced, has won him the J. Abraham National Award and the Indian Documentary Producer’s Association (IDPA) Award for Best Short Fiction.
Sanjib was also a speaker at the prestigious TEDxSaraighat 2014 & a panelist at the INSIDENE YOUTH CONCLAVE 2018. More recently Sanjib was invited as a guest speaker at the Tripura University in Agartala and he also attended a Q&A session at the Rajiv Gandhi University in Itanagar.
He has 2 new feature film projects in development. A Hindi language drama film as a director and an Assamese language biopic film as a producer which is based on the life of the famous Assamese singer Deepali Borthakur.
Sanjib is also author of the English language book 'III SMOKING BARRELS' which was published by RedGrab Books in 2020. He is presently writing his next book which is roughly based on the partition of India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/III_Smoking_Barrels
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3699963/
