Onir

Onir was born on 30th April 1969 in Thimpu, Bhutan. He was deeply interested in movies ever since his childhood and spent all of his free time by watching films in theaters. He became the principal at one of the local schools in Nepal soon after he completed the necessary educational qualifications, but soon resigned the post as he couldn’t tolerate the communal violence that was subjected to his own students.

Onir came to Kolkata to learn about various aspects of filmmaking in detail from Chitrabani film school. He received a scholarship from SFBTTC in Berlin for film editing, and he quit his post-graduate study from Jadavpur University. After he had returned to India, he was very keen to work in Cinemas and perform whatever task that he was capable of doing. During this time, he did multiple jobs such as editing videos and songs, script writing, producing musical albums, etc.

He had directed two documentaries before trying his hand at directing a feature film in 2005. His first film- ‘My Brother… Nikhil’ dealt with the stigma that is often attached to homosexuals and AIDS patients. He was inspired to make this movie while making a documentary on a swimmer named Dominic D’Souza, who also suffers from AIDS. The film was screened at many festivals worldwide, and it won the audience choice award at ‘LGBT’ festival, ‘Montreal’ and ‘Image+Nation’ Festival.

Though his film ventures after ‘My Brother… Nikhil’ were not commercially a success; they were liked by film enthusiasts for breaking the cliched notions associated with Indian films. However, his last film ‘I am’ which was made by combining four shorter films with various themes gained a lot of attention after it won two national awards for the best lyrics in addition to being the best film. Onir could be described as an all-rounder in the film industry after having tried direction, script writing, editing and producing.