When he was growing up, Nishil Sheth had never really imagined a career in cinema. “Everyone was trying to do what was expected—MBBS, architecture, engineering—I studied engineering myself,” reflects the filmmaker, who experienced the magic of films through Disney movies in childhood.
Today, that same curiosity and the experiences during engineering have led him to 13th, a Sony LIV original series that released this month, marking his debut in long-format storytelling. Set in the hyper-competitive world of JEE coaching, the show peeks into the lives of students caught in a pressure-cooker environment where ambition, expectation, and self-worth constantly collide.
13th, Sheth says, is less about academics and more about people. “It’s about vulnerability of students, teachers, everyone trying to hold it together,” he reflects. The show is also about second chances. “In Kota, many students take a gap year after completing their 12th to prepare for competitive exams and are called the 13th batch,” he explains. “It’s about that one defining year, the second chance. Even for me, filmmaking was my second shot after engineering.”
He built the courage to give this second shot when he attended a workshop by the late cinematographer V.K. Murthy. Inspired by his newfound learnings, he decided to try his hand at making a short film. “I ended up finding a cinematographer on Just Dial,” he laughs.
That impulsive experiment set him on an uncharted journey—from the city’s tech corridors to Mumbai’s independent film circuit, and eventually to international festivals. “When I first told my father I wanted to be a filmmaker, his reaction was that of disbelief. He told me, ‘If you said you wanted to sell bulbs, I could help! But this? I don’t even know what that world is!’” Still, his family never stopped him from trying. Encouraged by their support, Sheth took up an editing course in Bengaluru, which eventually led him to Whistling Woods International, where he studied filmmaking formally.
His debut feature, Bhasmasur (2017), made on a shoestring budget, won a string of international accolades. “I think the biggest challenge for any independent filmmaker, even today, is still the same, that is, funding,” Sheth notes. “For the first project, you go all out, you just want to make it happen. But after you’ve gone through that grind once, you realise that you can’t keep putting yourself through the same financial and emotional strain forever.”
Of course, OTTs have helped indie films reach a wider audience, he acknowledges. “But it’s not like before when platforms were expanding rapidly and a film like Bhasmasur could find a home somewhere.”
Perhaps that’s why, for Sheth, the real progress lies in persistence, continuing to tell stories that deeply matter to him. Between projects, he focuses on collaborating and developing scripts with his longtime writing partner, Raghav Dutt, and recently co-produced the Kannada feature Don’t Tell Mother, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival this year. “I’ve always been drawn to morally grey, grounded characters,” he says. “People who aren’t heroes or villains but just trying to do their best with what life throws at them.”
In an industry constantly shifting with streaming trends and data-driven decisions, Sheth prefers to keep his focus on the story itself. “Trends matter, but when your focus shifts to chasing them, it can dilute the essence of films. As a director, my job is to stay true to the narrative and let authenticity do the rest,” he says.
