Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni is the only cinematographer to have shot two National Award winning Gujarati films, Wrong Side Raju at the 64th ceremony and Hellaro at the 66th, where Hellaro took the Swarna Kamal for Best Feature Film. Swapnil S. Sonawane shot Chhello Show, India's official Academy Awards submission that made the fifteen-film Best International Feature shortlist. Dhawalika Singh shot Kutch Express, which won three National Awards at the 70th ceremony, and is a member of the Indian Women Cinematographer Collective.
Ask who made Hellaro and you get Abhishek Shah. Ask who made you feel the heat coming off the Rann in 1975 and there is no answer in most of the coverage, because the man who lit it, Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni, has never been the subject of a single profile in the Gujarati press. That is the shape of the problem. Gujarati cinema is now a roughly eighty releases a year industry with two National Award Swarna Kamal level films and an Oscar shortlist entry behind it, and the people who operated the cameras on all of it are still filed under other crew.
This page is a repair job. Every name here is traced to a specific film through that film's own credit record, then checked against a second source, and then checked once more against a photograph or a scrape-verified account before it was allowed on the list. Thirteen names survived that. Several did not, and they are named further down so the gaps are visible rather than papered over. If you want to understand why Gujarati films started looking different after 2012, the honest answer has less to do with budgets than with roughly a dozen people who knew where to put the camera.
The list at a glance
| Cinematographer | Signature Gujarati film | Other traced credits | Hardest credential |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni | Hellaro (2019) | Wrong Side Raju, Umbarro, Dhabkaaro | Shot two National Award winning Gujarati features |
| Swapnil S. Sonawane | Chhello Show (2021) | Angry Indian Goddesses | Shot India's Oscar submission that made the shortlist |
| Amitabha Singh | The Good Road (2013) | Khosla Ka Ghosla, Chillar Party | Best Gujarati Film, 60th National Film Awards |
| Dhawalika Singh | Kutch Express (2023) | Dear Father, Shubhchintak, Pushtaini | Shot a film that won three National Awards |
| Pushkar Singh | Kevi Rite Jaish (2012) | Bey Yaar | Shot the film that restarted the industry |
| Alex Mecwan | Chhello Divas (2015) | Sultaan, Kookh | Shot the commercial template for the modern hit |
| Pratik Parmar | Chaal Jeevi Laiye (2019) | Raado | Debut feature became a pre-pandemic top earner |
| Tapan Vyas | Love Ni Bhavai (2017) | Aum Mangalam Singlem, Chatni, Get Set Go | Three Gujarati features credited in 2026 alone |
| Prashant Gohel | Naadi Dosh (2022) | Ratanpur, Shu Thayu, Vash Level 2 | Largest traced Gujarati feature list on this page |
| Gargey Trivedi | Kasoombo (2024) | Supermen of Malegaon | Shot the industry's 156 minute period epic |
| Titu Kumar Jena | Jhamkudi (2024) | Ventilator | Shot a horror comedy that opened at a reported Rs 3.35 crore in four days |
| Suraj C Kurade | Reva (2018) | Chor Bani Thangaat Kare | Shot a river-location feature outside studio control |
| Shubham Gajjar | Laalo (2025) | Creative producer on the same film | Shot the reported first Rs 100 crore Gujarati film |
How this list was built
Every credit on this page comes from a named film's own credit record: English Wikipedia film infoboxes, the Moviebuff crew blocks for each title, and in two cases the cinematographer's own published portfolio site. Nobody appears on reputation or on an aggregated filmography alone. Identity verification was the harder gate. Wikimedia Commons has a free-licensed photograph of exactly one working Gujarati cinematographer, Amitabha Singh, so the rest had to be verified through a scraped Instagram profile that carried corroborating evidence, meaning a bio naming the film or the profession, a link to the person's own site or their exact professional database entry, or a credit tag from an official film account. A name match on an empty profile was treated as no verification at all. Six researched cinematographers were dropped for failing that test. Azwad Bhuiyan, credited on Vash, has an account under his name whose bio and location do not corroborate the credit. Navroze Contractor, who shot Sanjiv Shah's 1992 Hun Hunshi Hunshilal and died in 2023, has a Wikipedia biography but no free-licensed photograph anywhere on Commons. Swathy Deepak, who shot Shubh Yatra, and Prahlad Gopakumar, who shot Dhh, both have verified film credits and no traceable public account. Subrat Khatoi, credited on Montu Ni Bittu, and Bibhu Das, credited on Fakt Mahilao Maate, were dropped for the same reason. One conflict was left unresolved rather than guessed at: Wikipedia credits 3 Ekka to Pratik Parmar while Prashant Gohel's own portfolio site lists the same film, so it is claimed for neither of them here.
The award frames
Four cinematographers whose Gujarati work went to the National Film Awards or to the Academy.
1Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni
Sadineni is the only cinematographer who has shot two Gujarati films that won at the National Film Awards. He photographed Wrong Side Raju for Mikhil Musale, which took Best Feature Film in Gujarati at the 64th ceremony, and then Hellaro for Abhishek Shah, which took the Swarna Kamal for Best Feature Film at the 66th and became the first Gujarati film to win the top prize outright. Two very different assignments. Wrong Side Raju is a night-driven Ahmedabad crime drama. Hellaro is a daylight period piece set in the Rann of Kutch in 1975, framed at 2.39:1 scope, where the landscape has to carry as much of the story as the dialogue does.
He stayed with Abhishek Shah after Hellaro rather than cashing the award in elsewhere, shooting Umbarro in 2025 and then Dhabkaaro, whose official account credits him as director of photography alongside Mehul Surti on music. That continuity matters more than it sounds. Gujarati budgets rarely let a director keep the same head of department across four films, so a repeat DoP is usually a sign that the visual grammar of a film series is one person's, not an accident of scheduling.
Instagram: @tribhuvanbabu (verified 2026-07-29).
2Swapnil S. Sonawane
Chhello Show is a film about a boy who falls in love with the beam of a projector, which means the cinematographer had to shoot light itself as a character. Sonawane did it for Pan Nalin, who wrote and directed the semi-autobiographical story of a Saurashtra childhood. The film premiered at Tribeca in June 2021, released in India in October 2022, went out as India's official Academy Awards submission and made the fifteen-film shortlist for Best International Feature, the first Indian film in twenty one years to get that far.
He carries the ISC suffix in his own professional name, the Indian Society of Cinematographers post-nominal that Gujarati crew lists almost never contain. His long working relationship with Nalin predates Chhello Show, and their earlier collaboration was Angry Indian Goddesses, the ensemble film that won the People's Choice runner-up prize at Toronto. He is one half of the production outfit Latent Pictures. Chhello Show remains the most internationally scrutinised piece of camerawork Gujarati cinema has produced, which makes him unavoidable on this list.
Instagram: @swapsagram (verified 2026-07-29).
3Amitabha Singh
Singh occupies a strange corner of this list because he is the one name here with a Hindi mainstream reputation that arrived first. He shot Khosla Ka Ghosla and Chillar Party, then came to Gujarati through Gyan Correa's The Good Road, an NFDC production set on a highway across Kutch. He is credited on the film both as its cinematographer and as a producer, which in practice usually means the camera department and the money were solving the same problem at the same time.
The Good Road won Best Gujarati Film at the 60th National Film Awards and was then selected as India's official entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 86th Academy Awards, beating The Lunchbox to the nomination in a decision that stayed controversial for years. Whatever the argument was worth, the film put a sparse, road-level, sun-flattened Gujarati landscape in front of the Academy nine years before Chhello Show did, and Singh framed it.
Photo: Amitabha.Singh, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, via Wikimedia Commons.
4Dhawalika Singh
Kutch Express is a film about a woman who has never crossed the threshold of her own house and then decides to see the world, and the camera has to move from domestic containment to open country without the shift feeling like a trick. Singh shot it for Viral Shah. The film took three prizes at the 70th National Film Awards, including Best Feature Film Promoting National, Social and Environmental Values, Best Actress for Manasi Parekh and Best Costume Design for Niki Joshi. It is the most decorated Gujarati film of the decade after Hellaro, and a woman shot it.
She moved to Mumbai after graduating from the A.J. Kidwai Mass Communication Research Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia in 2012 and has worked across features, documentaries, web series and advertising since. Her debut feature as a professional cinematographer was Pushtaini, shot in the Himalayas and selected for MAMI in 2023. She went back to Gujarati for Shubhchintak in 2025, also shot Dear Father, and photographed the official Indian adaptation of The Office. She is a member of the Indian Women Cinematographer Collective, which lists her as one of fewer than forty women cinematographers organised in the country.
Instagram: @dhawalika (verified 2026-07-29).
The revival's first cameras
The people who shot the films that built the commercial template between 2012 and 2019.
5Pushkar Singh
If the Gujarati revival has a starting frame, Singh shot it. Kevi Rite Jaish came out on 15 June 2012, directed by Abhishek Jain for CineMan Productions, and it is the film that industry accounts point to as the moment urban Gujarati cinema restarted after a decade of fewer than ten releases a year. He came back for Bey Yaar in 2014, again with Jain, a 150 minute friendship drama that became the first genuine post-revival blockbuster.
Two films, both directed by the same person, both foundational, and then he largely moved on to Hindi work. His own professional listing carries Kevi Rite Jaish and Bey Yaar next to Maa, Gulkanda Tales, Bhoot, Ajeeb Dastaan and Akelli, which is a fair summary of what happens to a good Gujarati technician: the regional credits open the door and the Hindi credits pay the rent. He remains attached to the production outfit Code Film Company.
Instagram: @pushkarsingh01 (verified 2026-07-29).
6Alex Mecwan
Chhello Divas is the film every Gujarati producer has been trying to remake since 2015. Eight friends, a final college year, an Ahmedabad that looks like the Ahmedabad the audience actually lives in. Mecwan shot it for Krishnadev Yagnik. The film ran 132 minutes, released on 20 November 2015 through Belvedere Films, and was remade in Hindi the following year as Days of Tafree with Yagnik directing again.
The look is deliberately unglamorous, which is the whole point. Campus comedy in Indian cinema had been shot as aspiration for a decade. Chhello Divas is shot as recognition. Mecwan's other credits are thin in the databases, which is normal for a Gujarati camera career built outside Mumbai, but the film he is attached to has been the commercial template for the industry for ten years running.
Instagram: @alexmecwan (verified 2026-07-29).
7Pratik Parmar
Parmar's first film as a cinematographer was Chaal Jeevi Laiye, Vipul Mehta's family drama for Coconut Motion Pictures, which released on 1 February 2019 and ran 146 minutes. It is a road film about a father and son, shot substantially in Chopta in Uttarakhand, so a debut assignment came with mountain light, weather and a long schedule away from a controlled set. The film went on to become one of the biggest Gujarati earners of the pre-pandemic period.
He followed it with Raado in 2022, Krishnadev Yagnik's political thriller, which is about as far from a gentle family drama as the industry offers. His own profile describes him as a cinematographer and director working out of Mumbai. The pattern of a Gujarati DoP alternating between a soft-lit family picture and a hard-edged genre piece within three years is not versatility for its own sake. It is what a regional industry with roughly eighty releases a year demands of anyone who wants to keep working.
Instagram: @pratieque (verified 2026-07-29).
8Tapan Vyas
Vyas is Saandeep Patel's camera. He shot Love Ni Bhavai in 2017 and Aum Mangalam Singlem in 2022, two romantic dramas produced by Aarti Patel that between them established a recognisable house style for the softer end of Gujarati commercial cinema: warm interiors, uncluttered frames, faces held longer than a Hindi film would hold them.
He is also one of the busiest working DoPs in the industry right now, and the evidence is in the credit blocks rather than in any database. Chatni, releasing 18 September 2026 for Saandeep Patel, lists him as DOP. So does Waah Waah Viththal, releasing 20 November 2026. So does Get Set Go, releasing 7 August 2026. Three Gujarati features credited to one cinematographer inside a single year is the sort of workload that only exists in an industry where the pool of people who can competently light a feature is still small.
Instagram: @tapanvyas (verified 2026-07-29).
The working DoPs
The camera people carrying the current release slate, most of whom have never been profiled anywhere.
9Prashant Gohel
Gohel has the longest continuous camera career on this list and the least visible one. He took a diploma in cinematography from the Film & Television Institute in Bengaluru in 2002 and won the gold medal in his final year for best film making, then spent two decades shooting whatever the market had: Gujarati features, national television, corporate documentaries for the Gujarat government, wildlife work at Nalsarovar, cricket series coverage, Indian Idol, India's Got Talent, Nach Baliye.
His Gujarati feature list is the largest here and it runs Ratanpur and Shu Thayu in 2018, Order Order Out of Order in 2019, Naadi Dosh in 2022 and Vash Level 2 in 2025, alongside Romance Complicated and Divaswapna. Wikipedia credits Naadi Dosh and Vash Level 2 to him jointly with Haresh Bhanushali. He was also second unit director of photography on the Eros Now series about the Prime Minister directed by Umesh Shukla, and on the Disney+ Hotstar series Aar Ya Paar. Nobody writes profiles of a DoP with this filmography, which is precisely the documentation problem this page exists to fix.
Instagram: @prashant.gohel.5582 (verified 2026-07-29).
10Gargey Trivedi
Kasoombo is the biggest thing Gujarati cinema has attempted as a period action piece. Vijaygiri Bava directed it from Raam Mori's screenplay, adapted from Vimalkumar Dhami's book Amar Balidan, it runs 156 minutes, and it released in Gujarati on 16 February 2024 with a Hindi version following on 3 May. Trivedi shot it. A historical battle film at that length, with that cast, on a Gujarati budget is a scheduling and lighting problem before it is anything else.
His other calling card is documentary. He was the cinematographer on Supermen of Malegaon, Faiza Ahmad Khan's cult film about a small town in Maharashtra remaking Superman on nothing, shot across seven months and cut down to a 54 minute broadcast length. Fifteen years later people still write to the crew about it. A DoP who can hold a handheld documentary for seven months and then light a period war film is carrying two different sets of instincts, and Gujarati cinema does not have many of those.
Instagram: @gargeytrivedi (verified 2026-07-29).
11Titu Kumar Jena
Jena has shot both of Umang Vyas's biggest features. Ventilator came in 2018, a hospital-set family comedy drama running with Parth Bharat Thakkar's music. Jhamkudi came in 2024, a 153 minute horror comedy that released on 31 May and reportedly netted around Rs 3.35 crore in its first four days, one of the strongest opening runs the industry had seen for a genre picture at that point.
Horror comedy is a lighting problem more than a story problem. The same set has to read as funny in one scene and threatening in the next, usually within the same day of shooting, and there is rarely budget for a second lighting setup. Jena's own professional listing describes him plainly as a cinematographer working across advertising, television commercials and features, which is the standard survival mix for a camera person in this industry.
Instagram: @doptitu (verified 2026-07-29).
12Suraj C Kurade
Reva is the Gujarati film about a city man sent to a river ashram who slowly stops fighting it, directed as a duo by Rahul Bhole and Vinit Kanojia, released 6 April 2018 through Brainbox Studios and Baroda Talkies. Kurade shot it. The film lives on locations along the Narmada, which means the camera department had light it could not control and a schedule that had to bend to the river.
He is Goan, not Gujarati, and he came into the industry the way most of its technicians do, through a director who liked what he did on a smaller job and brought him back. His own portfolio site lists further Gujarati features alongside Reva. His Instagram bio says one word, cinematographer, and links to that site, which is more of a public professional record than most people in the Gujarati camera department maintain.
Instagram: @surajkuradedp (verified 2026-07-29).
13Shubham Gajjar
Laalo is the commercial outlier of the decade. Ankit Sakhiya's devotional drama released on 10 October 2025 and is reported to have crossed Rs 100 crore, which if the trade figures hold makes it the highest grossing Gujarati film ever released. Reports also credit its success with earning a Virtual Print Fee waiver, a courtesy usually reserved for major Hindi or international releases. Gajjar shot it and is credited as a creative producer on it.
The visual brief on a devotional film is unforgiving. Go too soft and it looks like a television serial, go too stylised and the audience it is made for stops trusting it. Gajjar shot the Gujarat locations connected to the story's devotional geography and kept the film legible for an audience that mostly does not go to multiplexes. His account carries the film's title in the bio and tags Manifest Films and the official Laalo page, which is how a below-the-line credit gets a paper trail in an industry that does not publish crew lists.
Instagram: @shubhamgajjarcinema (verified 2026-07-29).
What the numbers say
Gujarati features traced to each cinematographer on this list
Counts only named Gujarati feature credits that could be traced to a specific title in a film credit record. Anyone's real total is almost certainly higher, because Gujarati crew lists are published inconsistently and many smaller releases have no credit record at all.
Questions people actually ask
Who was the cinematographer of Hellaro?
Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni shot Hellaro for director Abhishek Shah. The film was framed at 2.39:1 scope and won the Swarna Kamal for Best Feature Film at the 66th National Film Awards, the first Gujarati film to take the top national prize. Sadineni had already shot Wrong Side Raju, which won Best Feature Film in Gujarati at the 64th ceremony.
Who shot Chhello Show, India's Oscar entry?
Swapnil S. Sonawane, who carries the Indian Society of Cinematographers post-nominal, shot Chhello Show for Pan Nalin. The film premiered at Tribeca on 10 June 2021, released in India in October 2022, and made the fifteen-film shortlist for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards.
Are there women cinematographers in Gujarati cinema?
Yes, though the number is very small. Dhawalika Singh shot Kutch Express, which won three National Awards at the 70th ceremony, and later shot Shubhchintak. She is a member of the Indian Women Cinematographer Collective, which lists fewer than forty women cinematographers nationally. Swathy Deepak shot Shubh Yatra, though she could not be verified for this list.
Who shot the highest grossing Gujarati film?
Shubham Gajjar shot Laalo, Krishna Sada Sahaayate, which released on 10 October 2025 and is reported to have crossed Rs 100 crore. He is also credited as a creative producer on the film. Trade figures for Gujarati releases are industry-reported rather than audited.
Do Gujarati films use Gujarati cinematographers?
Often not. Of the thirteen verified names here, several came in from outside the state, including Tribhuvan Babu Sadineni, Titu Kumar Jena, Suraj C Kurade from Goa and Dhawalika Singh from Delhi and Mumbai. The Gujarati camera department is a mixed national pool, which is one reason its credits are so hard to trace through any single regional source.
Sources and image credits
All photographs are free-licensed files from Wikimedia Commons, reused with the attribution each licence requires. No press agency or studio photographs are hosted on this site. Instagram content is linked or embedded from the official account, never re-hosted.
- English Wikipedia film articles and infoboxes for Hellaro, Chhello Show, Wrong Side Raju, Bey Yaar, Chhello Divas, Kutch Express, Kasoombo, Chaal Jeevi Laiye, Reva, Dhh, Umbarro, Jhamkudi, Vash, Vash Level 2, Naadi Dosh, Laalo and The Good Road, retrieved July 2026
- Moviebuff crew records for Hellaro, Bey Yaar, Wrong Side Raju, Kutch Express, Chaal Jeevi Laiye, Kasoombo, Umbarro and Jhamkudi, retrieved July 2026
- National Film Award for Best Production Design and National Film Award for Best Costume Design winner tables, English Wikipedia, retrieved July 2026
- Prashant Gohel's published portfolio and filmography at prashantgohel.in
- Indian Women Cinematographer Collective member listing for Dhawalika Singh at iwcc.in
- Suraj Kurade's portfolio at surajkurade.com
- Instagram profiles and official film account credit posts scraped and verified on 29 July 2026