BIOGRAPHY
Based in New Delhi, India, Karan Thapliyal’s penchant for the language of images finds roots in his childhood days spent in his father’s photo studio. A few years later, he went on to pursue
professional training in cinematography at
Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication, NewDelhi.
An award-winning cinematographer, Karan has been working on documentaries across lengths and
formats for national and international organisations like World Health Organisation, United Nations
Children’s Fund, United Nations Development Programme, and broadcasters like National
Geographic, Discovery and History for over 15 years. His interest lies in subjects of human interest
and environmental conservation. Karan’s experience of collaborating with different directors with distinctive styles has led him on journeys of continuous learning and unlearning, resulting in an
enduring contribution to his craft of visual storytelling.
Karan’s interest in a project is directly proportional to the challenge of its landscape. His appetite for travel and exploration has taken him to execute projects across the country’s geography experiencing the icy mountains of Siachen to the dense forests of Tamil Nadu, the blistering deserts of Rajasthan to the unforgiving rains of Meghalaya.
Karan Thapliyal’s documentaries have travelled to multiple festivals across the globe. His
internationally acclaimed film, “Writing with Fire” (Dir. Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh, 2021) is a double Sundance award winner. It also went to become the first documentary from India to have
been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Karan was the principal cinematographer for the Netflix short documentary, “Elephant Whisperers”
(Dir. Kartiki Gonsalves, 2022), which went on to create history as the first Indian production to have
won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
CLIENTS
