As a pioneer entrepreneur, Sapna Moti Bhavnani founded the hair salon Mad O Wot 18 years ago in Bombay. Through her versatile avatars such as writing a bitingly intimate weekly column for Mumbai Mirror and Mid-Day, authoring a self-help book for teenage girls Style O Wot, launching the avant-garde clothing line SoFake, to producing One Billion Rising at Carter Road (2013), acting in award-winning plays like NIRBHAYA – a searing testimonial play which won the Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award, The Fringe First Award and The Angel Herald Award in 2013 for cracking open the cone of silence around sexual and gender-based violence in India to JATINGA in 2017 –inspired by Kamathipura and highlights human trafficking worldwide; she traverses mainstream success with just as much ease as she skirts the underground youth art and culture movement.  

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Sapna Moti Bhavnani is best known for her award winning documentary Sindhustan (2019) which is about the largest migration of a culture (Sindhi) in history told through tattoos on her body.  Sindhustan has won 11 Awards, travelled to 23 international festivals. In July 2020 Sapna launched her production company called Wench Films to empower the female gaze. Keeping the same Wench philosophy, she founded Wench Film Festival - India’s first Horror Film Festival. Since its first edition in 2021, WFF has screened 146 films and Spotlighted 352 Women.  In Oct 2024, she launched India’s first Zombiecon.

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The story for Sapna’s next horror feature Bearlike Man was officially selected at NAFF presented by Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2021 making her the first Indian Woman Director to ever get selected and in 2022 at the BIFFF genre market. 

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She is currently writing the screenplay for Bearlike Man and developing a hybrid feature titled Wolf Song based on a young woman with hypertrichosis, also known as the "werewolf syndrome’ and her inspiring journey to become a singer, unravelling the transformative power of music amidst familial and societal challenges. Wolf Song has been officially selected as a WomanInFan Finalist at Sitges 2024. She is the recipient of Last Ship Residency in Khajuraho where she is working on a play called How to Walk Backwards in a Straight Line based on the avant garde playwright Sarah Kane.

 

Filmography

Actor – Scattered Windows Connected Doors (2013)

Actor – Nirbhaya (2013)

Actor – Jatinga (2017)

Writer | Producer | Director - Sindhustan (2019)

Actor | Producer – Janaan (2020)

Actor | Writer | Director | Producer - Landfills of Desire (2025)