Mrugesh Thakor is a Brooklyn-based Indian American writer, director, producer, and editor currently pursuing a BFA in Film at Pratt Institute. His films have screened at the Canadian Screen Award–qualifying New York Shorts International Film Festival, the International Film Festival of South Asia Toronto, the Chicago South Asian Film Festival, the Orlando Film Festival, and others.
He is currently in the festival circuit for Color of God (2025), which he wrote, directed, co-produced, and edited. Shot across India and the United States, the film brought together artists working across both countries. He is also developing his thesis film at Pratt.
A current First Run Fellow and former Gotham Film & Media Development Program fellow, he has worked across production, distribution, and post-production through roles at First Run Features, Vinyl Foote Productions, Midnight Media, and Pratt Sidelights+, and continues to edit and produce work for independent clients.
Growing up between two cultures, he became deeply sensitive to the quiet forces that shape identity. His work draws from a poetic realist tradition, influenced by filmmakers such as Yasujirō Ozu and Edward Yang, embracing stillness, observation, and emotional restraint. Through intimate yet objective storytelling, he explores the immigrant experience, coming of age, and the search for belonging, capturing the human condition through layered portraits of people and places.
On a more personal note, the WHY:
In second grade, I dealt with loneliness through Bollywood soundtracks, until my film-inspired temper sent me to a rural boarding school in South India. Somewhere between dreaming of becoming a pro runner and training in a Kenyan village, I started realizing film might be the thing I couldn’t shake.
When my family moved to America at fourteen, movies became my refuge, helping me make sense of cultural whiplash, generational chaos, and the general confusion of growing up. I’ve been chasing that clarity ever since, using film to explore the beautifully messy human condition across cultures and continents.