About

At the age of 12, Abhinandan started the journey of his creative pursuit with writing and painting. He started writing & illustrating for newspapers, and little magazines. Later, at the age of 15, he started his own little magazine as the editor and by the age of 18, he was heading his own publication house.

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Abhinandan studied in Barasat Peary Charan Sarkar Government High School. Having finished his schooling, Abhinandan shifted to Mumbai and went on to study Architecture under University of Mumbai. Later, he would eventually drop out and switch to filmmaking.

At the age of 19, Abhinandan met Bauddhayan Mukherji in Mumbai, and entered the world of cinema through Little Lamb Films. Abhinandan co-wrote Teenkahon (2014) with Bauddhayan. Later in Kosovo, he was amply rewarded for this venture as Teenkahon won the Best Screenplay award at the Bridge Film Fest, Kosovo. He was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay of a Foreign Language Film at Madrid International Film Festival for the same. 

He was a one-man army at Teenkahon – writing, assisting, post-producing the entire feature. Teenkahon went on to receive multiple awards in various international film festivals, being the only Bengali film in consideration in most cases. 

Abhinandan then co-founded the creative agency cum production house called Asterisc and created some of Bengal’s most loved communication pieces. 

In the March of 2019, Abhinandan shot his first feature film ‘Manikbabur Megh’(The Cloud & The Man). Produced by Bauddhayan Mukherji and co-produced by Monalisa Mukherji, the film has started it’s festival journey by receiving the special mention by the jury at the NFDC Film Bazaar, 2021. 

Marichjhapi, his next collaboration venture with Bauddhayan Mukherji and Little Lamb Films has already created a buzz in the international co-production market when it was chosen to represent India at the prestigious Asian Project Market at Busan 2019 and Cinéfondation L’Atelier at the Cannes Film Festival 2020.

Since 2019, Abhinandan has been designing posters under Asterisc’s banner for a popular Bengali audio show called Sunday Suspense by Radio Mirchi and transfigured the aesthetics of the Bengali audio industry like never before. He also wrote and adapted multiple stories for the same show by Radio Mirchi. With his horror short story ‘Roopkatha’, Radio Mirchi started a new vertical under the show called Sunday Suspense Originals.

In 2018, in collaboration with Radio Mirchi Abhinandan’s company Asterisc had produced Bengal’s first motion comic short for children based on Satyajit Ray’s cult short story ‘Bankubabur Bandhu’. It’s the only official adaptation of possibly the most controversial and aspirational story by Ray so far. The motion comic was released on Ray’s birthday as a small homage to the maestro and was directed and edited by Abhinandan. Though the project was a very small-scale production, It is still considered as a cult content in its genre and carries a 9/10 IMDB rating.

Apart from designing numerous posters for Radio Mirchi’s audio show, as a graphic designer, Abhinandan has been also designing film posters, book covers, posters, literary illustrations, and advertisement campaigns for multiple concerns and individuals. 

Abhinandan is a published author, essayist, and illustrator. While most of his literary works and illustrations got published in Ei Samay, a Bengali daily by The Times Group so far, his first novel, a short story omnibus, and an art book based on his illustration series called ‘Pen on Paper’ is slated to release by 2022. 

There are television and OTT original feature films that had also happened based on his stories as well. To name a few, Annapurna Basu’s Zee5 Original ’Saat No. Shanatan Sanyal’ (2019) , Rajdeep Ghosh’s ‘Shubho Sharodiya’ (TV Movie 2018) would top the list as the most popular ones. Apart from writing multiple series and feature projects, Abhinandan is presently working on his next feature, upcoming books, and a new game for children.