On Your Radar: Omi Zola Gupta

On Your Radar is a Grad Film News segment that features a current student. We asked Omi Zola Gupta a few questions and this is what he said.

What is currently inspiring you as a filmmaker?

I'm enjoying our feature writing class this semester. It's nice to pivot from all the short films we've worked on to long-form storytelling. It allows some breathing room in how you conceive of a story, and you can really sit with the characters and the spaces they inhabit. It opens up room for more layers, and it's exciting to explore the different narrative structures that can hold them.

What is the best advice you've ever received, and why?

I have this quote from Robert Bresson as my phone background: "Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen." It really moves me, and I let it guide me in my filmmaking pursuits. It reminds me that my perspective matters, and that there is value in reflecting the experiences, people, and places I know and grew up with.

Describe your earliest cinematic memory.

We used to go to the cinema on weekends as a family, and some of my earliest memories are from those outings. I remember seeing Million Dollar Baby and Kal Ho Naa Ho. The former felt incredibly visceral, while the latter sticks with me for a different reason - I can still picture my cousin’s mother, who is Greek and doesn’t speak a word of Hindi, sobbing uncontrollably through the film. There weren’t even subtitles. I was struck by how melodramatic it was, and how powerfully the emotions translated across language and culture.

See Omi's work at omizolagupta.com