Kanu Behl

Biography:

Kanu Behl is an Indian film director and screenwriter who was born in 1980. His contributions to Hindi cinema are well-known. He co-wrote LSD: Love Sex aur Dhokha and helped filmmaker Dibaker Banerjee with the cult hit Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!.

Titli, his directing debut, screened at a number of international film festivals, including BFI London, Filmfest Hamburg, Rio de Janeiro, Zurich, and Melbourne. Titli’s script won the Post Production Award at Film Bazaar’s Work-In-Progress Lab after being chosen by NFDC for the Screenwriters’ Lab 2012. At the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, Titli received a Caméra d’Or nomination.

Prior to his 1990 relocation to Delhi, Kanu Behl was born and raised in Patiala, Punjab. In addition to being writers, actors, and directors, his parents, Navnindra and Lalit Behl, have also directed telefilms for the government-run Doordarshan channel.

He attended Apeejay School in Noida and pursued a business bachelor’s degree at Delhi University’s Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies. He enrolled in the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute in 2003 to work toward a postgraduate diploma in cinema. He attended the Berlinale Talent Campus 2007 when he was at the Institute and produced his documentary “An Actor Prepares,” which tells the story of a struggling actor who, after seven years, gives himself fifteen days to either succeed in the movie business or go back home.

Following his graduation from SRFTI, he produced and directed documentaries for ZDF/Arte, Japan, and NHK, among other foreign channels. In the feature film Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, he served as an assistant director alongside Dibakar Banerjee. Alongside Banerjee, he co-wrote the highly regarded Love Sex aur Dhokha in 2010 and served as the project’s principal assistant director.

His first independently produced feature film, Titli, was chosen by NFDC for the Screenwriters’ Lab 2012 in 2012. The film went on to win the ‘Post-Production Award’ at Film Bazaar’s Work-In-Progress Lab in 2013. Titli participated in a number of international film festivals, such as the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, the 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival, the Rio de Janeiro International, the Zurich Film Festival, the Filmfest Hamburg, the BFI London Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, and the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.