As a pioneer entrepreneur, Sapna Bhavnani founded the cult hair salon Mad O Wot 19 years ago in Bombay and changed the way Indian youth looked at themselves.Through her versatile avatars such as writing an intimate weekly column for a well-known publication and authoring a self-help book for teenage girls “Style O Wot” to launching the avant-garde clothing line “So Fake” and acting in 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.
Sapna Moti Bhavnani is best known as Producer/Director of the 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 and is now streaming on MovieSaints.
Her second hybrid feature My Dog IS Sick was an official selection at the Visions Du Reel Film Market and World Premiered at New Horizons International Festival in 2021. The story for Sapna’s next horror feature Bearlike Man was officially selected at NAFF 2021 making her the first Indian Woman Director to ever get selected and in 2022 at the BIFFF genre market. She was also selected at BIFAN in 2022 as an official mentee at the Fantastic Film School.
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 in 2021 and has successfully finished 3 editions spotlighting 268 women.
She is currently writing the screenplay for Bearlike Man at Sundance Collab while editing her horror short and developing a documentary on one of the first Cabaret Bars In Bombay (Blue Nile) managed by her father titled Finding Tamiko The Tomato. She is also finishing a book - Chapter One for Harper Collins.
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 - My Dog Is Sick (2021)