Chanakya Vyas is a playwright, screenwriter, director, and educator based in Mumbai, India. His debut short film  in Kannada titled LOO was nominated for Best Short Film (Narrative) at the New York Indian Film Festival (2024) and won First Prize at the Bengaluru International Short Film Festival (2023, Karnataka Competition). It also won the Best Writing Award at the Round the Frame Short Film Festival (2024) and was selected as part of NFDC's Film Bazaar Recommends Viewing Room.  His recent short film in Marathi titled Mangya was part of the MAMI Select Filmed on iPhone program (2025) and was mentored by Konkona Sen Sharma. 

 

He was the former Artistic Director of Indian Ensemble, a multilingual theatre company, and his plays have been performed at Ranga Shankara, Prithvi Theatre, and the National Centre for Performing Arts. He has received grants from the India Foundation for the Arts and Science Gallery Bengaluru, and was selected for the Directors Lab at Lincoln Centre (2017) with a Ratan Tata Trust Scholarship. He is also a recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust Award, which supported his studies in Devised Theatre & Performance Making at the London International School of Performing Arts.

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Chanakya has attended short courses in filmmaking at the Prague Film School, Sundance Collab's Workshop on Directing and Visual Storytelling, and recently completed FTII's flagship Film Appreciation Course. 

 

Currently, he is working on his debut feature film script and a web series.

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