Sparsh Ahuja is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist and National Geographic Explorer based in Melbourne.
His work has exhibited in venues such as The Smithsonian, Victoria & Albert and Asian Art Museums, and featured at Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, MUBI, The New Yorker, TIME, The BBC and Al Jazeera amongst others.
We have virtually reconnected over 15 Partition survivors with their ancestral homes across the India–Pakistan border. This involved conducting in-depth oral history interviews, co-designing narratives with survivors, and transforming their stories into bespoke virtual reality journeys. Every step of the process was carefully designed to be trauma-sensitive, with workflows that acknowledged and respected the psychological complexity of engaging with memories of displacement, violence, and loss.
Project Dastaan has been internationally recognised for its innovative approach to immersive storytelling. Our work is now listed in the UK National Archives and the British History Curriculum, and has been featured in TIME, The BBC, The New Yorker, Reuters, Nikkei, NPR, and National Geographic. We’ve received endorsements from figures such as Malala Yousafzai and Gabo Arora, director of Immersive Storytelling and Emerging Technologies at Johns Hopkins University.
The project is inspired by my grandfather’s own migration from West Punjab to Delhi as a 7 year old.
See our work here
Featured in TIME, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Nikkei and Elle
Screened at The Smithsonian, Asian Art Museum, Harvard University, MIT Media Lab, V&A Museum, BFI and ForumDesImages amongst others.
Our academic collaborations have been equally central. In partnership with SOAS University and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, we conducted qualitative research—using interviews, surveys, and participatory workshops—to explore how VR and visual media can shape pedagogical practices around conflict history. We were also awarded the University of Warwick’s Enhancing Research Culture Fund to lead a project on visual identification and intergenerational memory, using VR and animation as tools to engage younger audiences with Partition history.
To support the growth of the project, I led the strategy and execution of a global crowdfunding campaign, building a community of supporters around our mission. I managed a team of over 30 volunteers, produced campaign videos, built a CRM of media partners, and oversaw donor communications and reward fulfillment. Through direct engagement with Kickstarter’s advocacy team, we secured a “preferred project” listing and raised $28,000 USD from more than 450 donors across 20 countries, surpassing our original target. Campaign rewards such as handmade calligraphy from Old Delhi and miniature paintings from Pakistan reflected our commitment to healing, memory, and cross-border connection. The campaign was endorsed by Suroosh Alvi (VICE) and amplified by a social share from Riz Ahmed.
Fear and Loathing in Kathmandu traces the dramatic story of Nepal’s transformation - from a 1960s hippie haven where legal cannabis fuelled a thriving counterculture, to a nation unravelled by foreign intervention and civil war. Both a cautionary tale and a story of resilience, Fear and Loathing in Kathmandu captures the tension, tragedy, and hope at the heart of Nepal’s four-decade journey from paradise to battleground.
This film interrogates the racist, politically expedient narratives that shaped global drug policy: why is marijuana demonized, while alcohol — a more harmful drug — is revered as cultural heritage in the West? What happens when Eastern spiritual and medicinal practices are criminalized, only to be repackaged and sold back for profit? Today, white entrepreneurs dominate America’s billion-dollar cannabis industry, while communities in the Global South — and the Black and brown people historically persecuted for the same trade — remain excluded from the windfall.
Through the prism of the 1970s counterculture and the end of the Hippie Trail, Fear and Loathing in Kathmandu reframes Cold War geopolitics not as distant history — but as the foundation of today’s global inequality, showing how imperial power reshaped nations, economies, and culture in its own image.
Director - Sparsh Ahuja
Produced by Gil Marsden (Dreamchaser Entertainment/Den of Martians) and Pallavi Sharda (Bodhini Studios)
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Birdsong portrays the collision of an ancient linguistic practice with the modern condition of urban life in Laos. The film explores how listening can change our perception of both society and nature, offering a glimpse into the philosophical relationship between sound and reality.
Watch on The Guardian
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Vimeo Staff Pick. Shortlisted for Grierson, IDA and BIFA Awards.
Official Selections:
SXSW (International Premiere)
Sundance London
Aesthetica Film Festival (World Premiere)
San Francisco Film Festival
LA Asian Pacific Film Festival
Palm Springs ShortsFest (Special Mention)
Flatpack Film Festival (Optical Sound Award)
San Diego Asian Film Festival
Dharamsala International Film Festival
Ethnocineca Vienna
CameraImage
Heart of Gold Film Festival
Norient Festival
Production Company: Riverpunch Films/Lao New Wave Cinema Countries of Production: United Kingdom / Laos
The film premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival as part of the New Frontier program, and opened to glowing reviews in The Economist and The Hindu.
The film takes audiences through a deeply personal perspective of this epic historical event. Two men from the Partition generation — Ishar Das Arora (voiced by Adil Hussain), an Indian Hindu who migrated from Pakistan to India, and Iqbal-ud-din Ahmed (voiced by Salman Shahid), a Pakistani Muslim who made the opposite journey — share childhood memories of their experiences while playing a board game. As the two men unpack their memories, audiences embody the experience of a 7-year-old child at key points in the migration. Child of Empire offers a powerful counter-narrative that lends a fresh perspective on the effects of forced migration on everyday individuals.
The score features an original rendition of Subh-e-Azaadi penned by the Pakistani revolutionary poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, composed by Vasundhara Gupta and sung by Amira Gill. The percussion is rooted, earthy, warm and represents "Hindustan" culturally. Praveen Sparsh has masterfully arranged and played various percussion instruments, including tabla, ghatam, djembe, bells, etc., which provide a grounded, rooted, and dynamic groove to the entire track. Yuji Nakagawa, from Japan, has played the Sarangi.
Winner: XR History Award
Nominee, Webby Award 2021: “Best VR Headset Experience”
Sundance 2022 (World Premiere)
Sheffield DocFest
Melbourne IFF
Atlanta Film Festival
Venice Gap Financing Market 2020
Production Company: Dastaan Films Pvt Ltd/Anzu Films
Countries of Production: United Kingdom / India
Lost Migrations is a three-part animated series which tells the untold stories of the Partition through the voices of the colonised. Most of the literature and cultural exploration of Partition has focused on the division of the province of Punjab by British authorities in 1947. This project aims to showcase the diverse voices of the subcontinent in an engaging way, combining local artistic styles and traditions that celebrate the individuality of each community.
This episode shows the ripples of Partition far from the India-Pakistan borderlands, and its wider impact on mercantile communities in South-East Asia who were forced to choose between their ancestral land of India and other countries where they had lived for generations.
Over a conversation whilst cooking with her grandmother, eight-year-old Nithya learns of her family’s escape from Burma during World War II, and how new borders cut her family off from their childhood home in Rangoon. She realises that the family’s Chettiar cuisine has been the only constant in the story of intergenerational loss.
Weaving between close-cut visuals of cooking and Nithya’s imagination of the journey of her ancestors, Seabirds juxtaposes exile with childhood fantasy. The episode also combines the rich coastal imagery of South India with Burmese architectural design.
World Premiere - BFI Southbank
STREAMING on MUBI and NOWNESS ASIA
Produced by Project Dastaan & Puffball Studios, Directed by Sawera Jahan
Lost Migrations produced in collaboration with Puffball Studios and Spitting Image Bangalore.
Rest in Paper - Animated Short [Producer]
Lost Migrations is a three-part animated series which tells the untold stories of the Partition through the voices of the colonised. Most of the literature and cultural exploration of Partition has focused on the division of the province of Punjab by British authorities in 1947. This project aims to showcase the diverse voices of the subcontinent in an engaging way, combining local artistic styles and traditions that celebrate the individuality of each community.
Based on the true story of Ghulam Ali, Rest in Paper satirises the bureaucratic nightmare created by migration, where the burden of proof is on the destitute migrant. Ghulam Ali is an Indian citizen who found himself stateless in 1947. Lacking the correct paperwork, he gets caught in a chain of arrests and deportation, crossing the border many times and eventually loses his sense of belonging and identity.
The film eschews the traditional sepia-drenched tones of Partition stories. Instead, it shows a vibrant landscape in sharp contrast to the physical and emotional violence of forced migration. The short draws upon Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar’s The Long Partition, Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh”, and Franz Kafka's The Trial.
Funded by British Council and National Geographic Society
World Premiere - BFI Southbank
STREAMING on MUBI and NOWNESS ASIA
Produced by Project Dastaan & Puffball Studios, Directed by Haseeb ur Rehman
Lost Migrations produced in collaboration with Puffball Studios and Spitting Image Bangalore.
Sultana’ s Dream - Animated Short [Producer]
Lost Migrations is a three-part animated series which tells the untold stories of the Partition through the voices of the colonised. Most of the literature and cultural exploration of Partition has focused on the division of the province of Punjab by British authorities in 1947. This project aims to showcase the diverse voices of the subcontinent in an engaging way, combining local artistic styles and traditions that celebrate the individuality of each community.
This episode depicts the hopes and shattered dreams of an elderly woman based in contemporary Calcutta. Flashbacks appear of various women’s experiences during Partition, including forced religious conversion, abuse and abduction.
Sultana’s Dream is inspired by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain’s groundbreaking 1905 feminist text of the same name and the works of Urvashi Butalia. This episode juxtaposes the aesthetics of documentary filmmaking with textures and character designs inspired by Pahadi and Mughal miniature paintings, and artists like Nainsukh and Abanindranath Tagore.
Funded by British Council and National Geographic Society
World Premiere - BFI Southbank
STREAMING on MUBI and NOWNESS ASIA
A film by Project Dastaan & Spitting Image
Directed and animated by Sandhya Visvanathan, Aniruddh Menon, Shoumik Biswas and Aditya Bharadwaj
Lost Migrations produced in collaboration with Puffball Studios and Spitting Image Bangalore.
StoryFutures (led by Royal Holloway, University of London) commissioned us to use and reinterpret archival material from the BBC and BFI archives, to tell a lost story from British history. In three acts, users interact with the archive in a completely new and three dimensional way, and eventually find themselves plunged into a rave to the tunes of London's contemporary Daytimers Collective.
Designing an experience with the musical journey at its heart was a new and exciting challenge. With a heavy emphasis on the use and exploration of spatial sound design, this time the visuals played a supporting role to the audio landscape. From re-mastering of the archive, to a complimentary UI soundscape, and finally into the rave, the goal was to lay on a sensational 360 immersive audio experience.
In an effort to bring immersive formats to a wider public audience, “Off The Record” travelled to 15 towns in the UK as part of the UNBOXED festival. Between July and October 2022 this showcase, which ran under the name StoryTrails, offered local communities a deep dive into our collective history and offered many their first encounter with virtual reality.
Co- creator; produced in collaboration with Emmy-Award winning “No Ghost” Studios London.
Official Selections:
Belfast XR Festival
AMMA is an original and groundbreaking virtual reality production from Tara Theatre. Through cutting-edge 360 VR storytelling, you’ll travel across time and space to step into one woman’s memories of both the War of Independence in Bangladesh, and rebuilding a life in 1970s and 1980s Britain.
Magical and deeply affecting, AMMA takes you on a journey through stunning locations in Bangladesh, and back, to a daughter confronting the truth of her mother’s life.
Immersive Theatre Piece
(VR Line Producer)
Client Work for Tara Theatre (London):
managing week long 360 video shoot in Bangladesh
Winner - Digital Innovation Award at the 2023 UK Theatre Awards