Indian Indie filmmakers experiment with form through MAMI’s iPhone program

The latest edition of the MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone program is less about technology itself and more about what emerging filmmakers are choosing to do with it. Across four short films set in Mumbai, Kerala, Goa, and Bengal, the participating directors use the iPhone 17 Pro Max as a filmmaking tool that allows for mobility, experimentation, and intimacy rather than spectacle.

The initiative, led by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image, brought together filmmakers Shreela Agarwal, Ritesh Sharma, Robin Joy, and Dhritisree Sarkar under the mentorship of directors including Sriram Raghavan, Chaitanya Tamhane, Dibakar Banerjee, and Geetu Mohandas.

What emerges from the program is not a showcase of “shot on phone” gimmicks, but a collection of films attempting distinct visual and emotional languages within constrained production realities.


Agarwal’s 11.11 moves through Mumbai at night, following two women on a first date across dimly lit streets and beaches. The filmmaker, who returned to cinema after a career-ending boxing injury, uses movement heavily throughout the film. Much of the camera language relies on fluid handheld choreography and close physical proximity to performers, something she suggests became easier because of the compactness and stabilization capabilities of the device. Rather than treating low-light conditions as a limitation, the film appears to lean into them, preserving the texture of Mumbai after dark instead of artificially flattening it.

For Ritesh Sharma, whose She Sells Seashells is set along Goa’s beaches, the emphasis shifts toward interiority. The film follows a teenage migrant navigating aspiration and class boundaries through seemingly ordinary moments. Sharma uses shallow focus and sound design to create a more dreamlike psychological space around the protagonist. His observations about filmmaking are particularly notable because they point to a changing production workflow: recording ambient sound directly on the phone during pre-production, moving files quickly into edit systems, and using lightweight setups that reduce the gap between observation and capture.

Robin Joy’s Pathanam (Paradise Fall) operates on a more ambitious visual scale. Set in Kerala, the film imagines the collapse of an angel into the backyard of an atheist, triggering social and political unrest. Joy describes the project as something that once felt logistically inaccessible because of its outdoor staging and effects-heavy sequences. Here, the smaller form factor of the device becomes practical rather than aesthetic. Shooting on water, stabilising movement in difficult terrain, and handling long schedules without extensive equipment infrastructure allowed the production to attempt imagery that would traditionally require larger crews and budgets.

Meanwhile, Dhritisree Sarkar approaches technology from a more personal and metaphorical direction. Her film Kathar Katha (The Tale of Katha) centers on a woman gradually losing her ability to communicate, using body horror as an expression of emotional suppression. Sarkar, whose first short was also shot on an iPhone during the pandemic, uses close-up imagery extensively to explore confinement and internal anxiety. Rather than aiming for polished digital realism, the team reportedly pushed grain, contrast, and texture in post-production to evoke a more tactile, celluloid-like visual language.

What ties these projects together is not simply accessibility, but a changing relationship between filmmakers and equipment. Indian independent cinema has long been shaped by resource constraints, with many emerging directors spending years waiting for institutional support or access to expensive gear. Programs like this suggest that the barrier between idea and execution is narrowing, particularly for short-form storytelling.

That shift is reflected in comments from festival director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, who notes that previous films from the initiative have already begun circulating widely online and at festivals. The broader impact may not lie in proving that phones can shoot films, a conversation that is now largely settled, but in normalising a production culture where newer filmmakers begin making work immediately instead of waiting for traditional entry points into the industry.

All four films are currently available on MAMI’s YouTube channel.