With a penchant for narrating tales, Arjun Samantaray from Jatni, Khorda is a filmmaker and theatre artist. Often uneasy with such categorisations, he regards himself foremost as a storyteller. Blending his background in theatre with an immaculate eye for cinematography, Arjun’s stories explore the world and its characters in exhausting detail, revealing with great sensitivity the threads that lay bare; juxtaposed against the overwhelming visual grandeur of the natural and cultural worlds, in a sense of sublime, but also ironical, beauty.
Indradhanu (2025), his first film on the big screen, is out in theatres now. Starring an impressive lineup of both veteran as well as budding actors, the film bases on the seven colors of the rainbow and uses colors as the primary motif in cinematography as well as storytelling. It heralds a new age of art cinema in the Odia industry.