Four rising Indian filmmakers have accomplished cinematic brief movies shot totally on iPhone 17 Pro Max for the third annual MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone program, a collaboration between the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) and Apple. The movies showcase a unprecedented vary of storytelling, from a moonlit romance on Mumbai’s streets to an angel crash-landing in a Kerala yard, and the outcomes are turning heads properly past India’s borders. If you thought the finest smartphone digital camera was solely good for taking pictures your lunch, assume once more.
What Is MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone?
The MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone program is designed to place skilled filmmaking instruments in the arms of rising Indian storytellers after which get out of the manner. This yr’s cohort options 4 filmmakers, every bringing a wildly completely different background and cinematic imaginative and prescient to the desk. They used an iPhone 17 Pro Max as their main digital camera, supported by a MacBook Pro with M5 and an iPad Pro with M5 for modifying and monitoring. The movies at the moment are obtainable to observe on MAMI’s YouTube channel.
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The program carries critical mentorship weight. This yr’s mentors embody director Sriram Raghavan (Andhadhun), Chaitanya Tamhane (Court, The Disciple), Dibakar Banerjee, and Geetu Mohandas, collectively carrying accolades from India’s National Film Awards, the Venice International Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival. Tamhane famous that smartphone filmmaking is “redefining the art form” by opening up potentialities round choreography, motion, and accessibility.
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The Four Films and the Filmmakers Behind Them
11.11 by Shreela Agarwal
Perhaps the most unconventional filmmaker in the group, Shreela Agarwal, is a national-level boxing gold medallist who returned to cinema after a career-ending harm. Her movie 11.11 is described as a love letter to Mumbai after darkish, following two ladies on a first date by way of dimly lit streets and seashores. The difficult low-light situations have been overcome utilizing ProRes RAW seize, which allowed her group to push ISO settings in post-production and recuperate shadow element with out the costly lighting rigs that sometimes make indie filmmaking so cost-prohibitive. Inspired by the expressionist dance-theatre of German choreographer Pina Bausch, Agarwal wanted a digital camera she might bodily climb rocks with. The iPhone’s built-in stabilisation made that doable. “The freedom,” she says, “is simply unmatched.”
She Sells Seashells by Ritesh Sharma
Ritesh Sharma, who grew up in Varanasi and educated as a avenue theatre performer, directs She Sells Seashells, a quietly devastating story of a 17-year-old Rajasthani migrant named Maruti who desires of coming into a beachside restaurant she can’t afford in Goa. Sharma used iPhone 17 Pro Max’s Cinematic mode to blur the line between his protagonist’s outer actuality and inside dreamscape, shifting focus to information the viewers emotionally. To handle the appreciable noise of the Arabian Sea and Goa’s carnival ambiance, he leaned on the Audio Mix characteristic, which allowed exact management over ambient sound. “I felt like a moving studio,” he mentioned. He additionally used iPad Pro as a second monitor by way of Sidecar whereas reviewing edits on MacBook Pro throughout manufacturing.
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Pathanam (Paradise Fall) by Robin Joy
Robin Joy, who served as affiliate director on Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (winner of the Grand Prix at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival), brings a splendidly absurdist premise to his brief: an angel collapses in the yard of a dedicated atheist, triggering sociopolitical chaos. Joy had lengthy thought of the idea too formidable due to its demanding outside units and motion sequences, however iPhone 17 Pro Max modified his calculation. Action mode saved footage steady even whereas the crew was tossed about on a small boat in the center of a lake. The most technically audacious shot in the movie, depicting the angel unfolding its wings and ascending again to the heavens, was initially estimated to take three months of post-production work. AI-powered masks monitoring in Adobe Premiere Pro, accelerated by the Neural Accelerators in MacBook Pro’s M5 GPU, minimize that timeline down to 3 weeks. “Being able to capture cinematic stories with an iPhone lets newer filmmakers explore so many more possibilities,” Joy says.
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Kathar Katha (The Tale of Katha) by Dhritisree Sarkar
Dhritisree Sarkar is a PhD scholar specialising in gender and growth who made her filmmaking debut throughout the COVID pandemic on an iPhone 7. That debut brief, Chhaddonam (Pen Name), was later acquired by streaming platform MUBI. Her new movie, Kathar Katha, follows a information anchor identified with a situation that progressively seals her exterior orifices, a idea born from Sarkar’s personal unsettling second of self-reflection. The movie’s most hanging visible, a close-up of a Bengali bread referred to as luchi puffing up in the character’s eye as a metaphor for suppressed rage, was made doable by the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s 8x optical zoom at 200mm. To recreate the look of celluloid movie and evoke the lives of an earlier technology of girls, Sarkar and her cinematographer shot in ProRes RAW with Apple Log 2 and pushed distinction and grain to the excessive in submit.
Why This Program Matters Beyond India
The program now has a confirmed monitor file, with final yr’s Seeing Red exceeding a million views on YouTube and Kovarty successful Best Short Film at the Bengaluru International Short Film Festival. MAMI Mumbai Film Festival director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur says the work is triggering a wider artistic motion, with tons of of individuals impressed to select up their telephones and begin making brief movies themselves. That isn’t a trivial declare. Independent filmmaking has traditionally been constrained not by expertise, however by entry to gear, crew, and capital. A tool able to taking pictures cinema-grade ProRes RAW at 4K, with built-in stabilisation, a 200mm optical zoom, and exact audio controls, dramatically shrinks that barrier.
The broader image right here is about who will get to inform tales. A boxer-turned-filmmaker recovering from harm. An economist from Bengal. A avenue theatre actor from Varanasi. A Cannes-adjacent director from Kerala. None of those is the profile that conventional movie faculties and manufacturing studios have been constructed to serve. The MAMI Select program, now in its third yr, is making the case that the digital camera itself was all the time the gatekeeper.
The Bigger Shift in Indian Independent Cinema
This yr’s lineup sits inside a broader second of momentum for Indian impartial cinema globally. With All We Imagine as Light taking the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2024 and Indian brief movies more and more discovering audiences on platforms like MUBI and YouTube, the worldwide urge for food for Indian impartial storytelling has by no means been stronger. Programs like MAMI Select are feeding immediately into that pipeline, figuring out voices earlier than they’ve the infrastructure, not after.
It is price noting, too, that the selection of instruments issues as a lot as the expertise. ProRes RAW, Cinematic mode, Action mode, Audio Mix, and 8x optical zoom aren’t gimmicks. In the arms of filmmakers who know the best way to use them, these are the sorts of capabilities that used to require a rental digital camera and a full crew.
The most attention-grabbing factor about MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone isn’t the expertise. It is the argument the program makes about gatekeeping. When a national-level boxer, an economics scholar, a avenue theatre performer, and a Cannes affiliate director can every make a cinematically distinct brief movie on the similar gadget, the previous excuses about who will get to make motion pictures begin sounding a lot much less convincing. The subsequent nice Indian movie would possibly already be taking pictures.
