Karthik Ghattamaneni

Karthik Ghattamaneni is a young Indian cinematographer, short film maker and film director hailing from Hyderabad, India.He was born on 28th October, 1988. He completed his schooling in Hyderabad. Later, he studied Computer Science at Institute of Aeronautical Engineering in the city. He was born to an IPS officer at Hyderabad. He had no links in the film industry nor did he follow the family tradition. Karthik was always fascinated about movies but was not sure about it. During his engineering, he did short films and was very fascinated by the art and craft of editing. He believed that editing is a part of conveying a story which led him to start directing. In 2005, along with a bunch of friends like Edward, Vijay, Gautam and Ajay; he established “Pondfreaks Entertainment” with his passion for film making.

They were one of the earliest groups in the city that made short films and that too without any sort of formal training. He and his team made some hit short films like ‘Infinity’, ‘Bewars’, ‘Nadir’, ‘Sunshine’, ‘Close doors’, ‘Invisible fish’, etc. Some of them received great appreciations. He also won a lot of short films competitions at inter-collegiate festivals. In 2010, he decided to enroll himself for learning cinematography in Mindscreen Film institute at Chennai, India. He learned a lot under “Rajeev Menon” and was addicted to camera and directions. He gained a lot of experience by assisting renowned cinematographer Rajiv Menon. However, his short film ‘Infinity’ which stars “Harshvardhan Rane” did wonders and got a lot of attention from celebrities like “Sanjay Leela Bhansali” and “Farhan Akhtar”. That’s when a lot of movie offers came to his pathway.

Later, Karthik started his journey to big screen as a cinematographer for movies like ‘Prema Ishq Kadal’ and ‘Karthikeya’. Soon after that, he made his directorial debut by working for the movie “Surya vs Surya”. Along with directing, Karthik also took charge for the cinematography of this film. This movie is an Indian Telugu love story. The movie received a lot of positive responses. Also, his work and contributions were regarded beyond excellence as a debutant. He was also nominated for SIIMA’s best cinematographer award for the year. On 14 February 2016, Karthik got married to Sindhu, a Hyderabadi girl. With Karthik’s dedication and perseverance, he is known as one of the promising directors in the industry. It’s been 10 years since Pondfreaks was established for making short films and now they have got into making big movies. Karthik was recently involved in remaking “Premam” in Telugu which captured a lot of audiences. He hopes to continue making great movies in the near future as well.

Karthik Family Tree (Infographic Family Tree)