Niki Joshi won Best Costume Design at the 70th National Film Awards for Kutch Express, the only Gujarati design win in more than forty years since Meera Lakhia took Best Production Design at the 28th ceremony for Bhavni Bhavai. Prateek Gupta edited Hellaro, which won the Swarna Kamal for Best Feature Film, and had already won a National Award for directing the documentary Goonga Pehelwan. Vijaygiri Bava cuts his own films, taking director, writer, producer and co-editor credits on Kasoombo.
Two facts frame everything on this page. Meera Lakhia won Best Production Design at the 28th National Film Awards for Ketan Mehta's Bhavni Bhavai, and forty two years passed before another Gujarati craft person won a design prize at the same ceremony, when Niki Joshi took Best Costume Design for Kutch Express. Four decades. In between, an entire industry collapsed, restarted, produced a Swarna Kamal winner and an Oscar shortlist entry, and its editors, art directors, costume designers and sound crew went almost entirely unnamed.
This is the harder of the two craft pages, because below-the-line credits for Gujarati films are barely recorded anywhere. Film infoboxes carry cinematography and editing. They rarely carry production design. They almost never carry sound. Several of the names here were recovered from the credit blocks that production houses publish on social media when a film is announced, which in 2026 is a more complete record of who built a Gujarati film than any database is. Thirteen people survived verification. Meera Lakhia, the historic anchor of the whole page, did not, and that is a loss worth stating plainly.
The list at a glance
| Name | Department | Signature Gujarati credit | Hardest credential |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prateek Gupta | Editing | Hellaro (2019) | Cut the Swarna Kamal winner and won a National Award as a director |
| Nirav Panchal | Editing | Chhello Divas (2015) | Cut Bey Yaar, Chhello Divas, Fakt Mahilao Maate and 3 Ekka |
| Apurva Motiwale | Editing | Umbarro (2025) | More than 40 films across Hindi, Marathi and Telugu |
| Vaishnavi Krishnan | Editing | Dhabkaaro (2026) | FTII-trained editor on Abhishek Shah's new feature |
| Faisal Mahadik | Editing | Shubhchintak (2025) | Cut a Soul Sutra release with a national cast |
| Vijaygiri Bava | Directing and editing | Kasoombo (2024) | Directed, wrote, produced and co-edited a 156 minute epic |
| Manish Saini | Directing and editing | Shubh Yatra (2023) | Best Feature Film in Gujarati, 65th National Film Awards, for Dhh |
| Niki Joshi | Costume design | Kutch Express (2023) | Best Costume Design, 70th National Film Awards |
| Sheel Thakore | Production design | Hellaro and Kutch Express | Designed the two most decorated modern Gujarati films |
| Bhavya Buch | Art direction | Jhamkudi (2024) | Art-directed the industry's biggest horror comedy opening |
| Chirayu Bodas | Production design | Chatni (2026) | Trained architect designing for Gujarati features |
| Gauri Dighe | Costume design | Shubhchintak (2025) | Dressed a Soul Sutra release with a cross-industry cast |
| Yash Darji | Sound design | Kutch Express (2023) | MPSE sound designer on a three-time National Award winner |
How this list was built
Credits here come from English Wikipedia film infoboxes, Moviebuff crew records for individual titles, National Film Awards winner tables, and the crew blocks published by production houses and heads of department when a film is announced or released. That last source is unusual but it is currently the most complete public record of Gujarati below-the-line work, and every credit drawn from it was taken from a post by the film's own account or by another verified head of department on the same film. Identity verification was the binding constraint. Wikimedia Commons carries free-licensed photographs of exactly two people on this page, both of whom are directors who also cut their own films. Everyone else had to be confirmed through a scraped account whose bio, self-linked professional database entry, or credit tag from an official film account corroborated the claim. A name match on an empty profile was rejected outright. The drops are significant and worth naming. Meera Lakhia, who won Best Production Design at the 28th National Film Awards in 1980 for Bhavni Bhavai and is the most historically important craft name in Gujarati cinema, has no photograph on Commons and no traceable public record, so she is honoured in the text and excluded from the list. Ravi Popat, who co-designed Hellaro, was dropped after the only candidate account under his professional alias returned nothing. Anirban Borthakur, Hellaro's sound designer, has an account under his exact name whose bio hints at sound work but does not corroborate a single credit, so he was cut rather than guessed at. Shreyas Beltangdy, who cut Chhello Show, has a detailed professional site and no Instagram presence and no free-licensed photograph. Cheragh Todiwala, who cut Wrong Side Raju, Shivam Bhatt, who cut both Vash films, Krushansh Vaja, who cut Laalo, Ketan Madiwale, who cut Jhamkudi, and Ashwin Bharde, who designed sound for Wrong Side Raju, were all researched, credit-confirmed and then dropped for the same reason. This page is deliberately shorter and more honest than a complete one would be.
The cutting room
The five editors whose Gujarati credits could be traced to specific films and whose identities could be confirmed.
1Prateek Gupta
Gupta cut Hellaro, and he also co-wrote its screenplay with Abhishek Shah and Saumya Joshi, worked as its associate director and put money into it as a co-producer. That is four jobs on the film that won the Swarna Kamal for Best Feature Film at the 66th National Film Awards, which tells you something real about how Gujarati films get finished. There is no separation of powers. The person who wrote the scene is often the person deciding, months later, that it does not survive the cut.
His own directing credit came first. Goonga Pehelwan, a documentary about a deaf wrestler, took a National Award for a debut director at the 62nd ceremony. He then cut Love Ni Bhavai in 2017 and Montu Ni Bittu in 2019, runs the advertising firm Videowala, and is back on the producing side of Dhabkaaro, the new Abhishek Shah film. Two National Awards on a Gujarati editing bench is not a record anyone else here can match.
Instagram: @prateek.videowala (verified 2026-07-29).
2Nirav Panchal
Panchal has cut more of the commercially important Gujarati films of the last decade than anyone else on this page. Bey Yaar in 2014, which he cut with Satchit Puranik and which became the first post-revival blockbuster at 150 minutes. Chhello Divas in 2015, the campus comedy that every producer has been chasing since. Thai Jashe! in 2016. Fakt Mahilao Maate in 2022. 3 Ekka in 2023.
He runs a post studio called Continuum Visual Vantage and describes himself in two words, film editor. What makes his run notable is genre spread rather than volume. A 150 minute friendship drama, an eight-hander ensemble comedy, a body-swap high concept and a three-strand comedy are four different editing problems, and the modern Gujarati industry has produced very few cutters who have solved all four.
Instagram: @storysewn (verified 2026-07-29).
3Apurva Motiwale
Motiwale cut Umbarro for Abhishek Shah, the 137 minute film that Everest Entertainment and Iraada Studioz released on 24 January 2025 with Mehul Surti scoring and Tribhuvan Babu on camera. She came to it with a Hindi, Marathi and Telugu career already behind her: more than forty films, a long partnership with editor Ashish Mhatre, a first credit on the Marathi film Ajab Lagnachi Gajab Goshta in 2010, and cuts on Katyar Kaljat Ghusali and Adipurush.
Bringing in an editor with forty films behind her for a Gujarati feature is not the norm, and it is worth naming as a signal. Gujarati production has spent a decade building crews out of whoever was nearby and available. Hiring a senior cross-industry editor for a single regional film is what a maturing industry looks like when it decides post-production is not the place to save money.
Instagram: @editor_cinema_circus (verified 2026-07-29).
4Vaishnavi Krishnan
Krishnan is the editor of Dhabkaaro, Abhishek Shah's film after Umbarro, and the film's official account names her among its heads of department alongside cinematographer Tribhuvan Babu and composer Mehul Surti. She trained at the Film and Television Institute of India, which is a rarer line on a Gujarati crew list than the industry likes to admit.
Naming her here is partly a bet and partly a correction. Dhabkaaro is recent, so there is no decade of press to draw on, but the pattern is the same one that produced Hellaro: a director who reassembles his heads of department around a new film and lets the editing bench be a named, credited, visible job rather than an anonymous one. Gujarati cinema's editing history is thin mostly because nobody bothered to write the names down while the films were still in theatres.
Instagram: @vkrishnan1504 (verified 2026-07-29).
5Faisal Mahadik
Mahadik cut Shubhchintak, the Nisarg Vaidya film released on 30 May 2025 by Soul Sutra Studios and RD Brothers, produced by Parthiv Gohil and Manasi Parekh, with Dhawalika Singh on camera and Swwapnil Joshi and Manasi Parekh leading the cast. His credit sits in the film's own published crew list, which is how a below-the-line name in this industry gets recorded at all.
His profile says three words, editor by choice, and links to his professional database entry. That combination is rarer than it should be. Most Gujarati craft people carry no public professional footprint whatsoever, which means their work exists but their name does not, and the record of who actually built the last decade of this cinema quietly disappears with each passing year.
Instagram: @faizee222 (verified 2026-07-29).
The directors who cut their own films
In an industry with thin post-production budgets, holding the timeline is the cheapest form of authorship.
6Vijaygiri Bava
Bava is the clearest case in Gujarati cinema of a director who refuses to hand over the cut. On Kasoombo in 2024 he is credited as director, co-writer with Raam Mori, producer and co-editor alongside Ashish Oza and Kanu Prajapati. On 21mu Tiffin in 2021 he directed, co-wrote the screenplay with Raam Mori from Mori's own story, and co-edited with Alok Mehta. Kasoombo runs 156 minutes and adapts Vimalkumar Dhami's Amar Balidan.
Editing your own historical action film at that length is either arrogance or economics, and in Gujarati cinema it is usually economics. Bava also directed Premji, Rise of a Warrior in 2015 and Montu Ni Bittu in 2019 under Vijaygiri Filmos with Twinkle Vijaygiri producing. The practical consequence of a director-editor is a film that is structurally identical to its screenplay, for better and worse. Kasoombo's length is the argument for both sides.
Photo: Imfarhad7, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, via Wikimedia Commons.
7Manish Saini
Saini wrote, directed and produced Dhh, the film about three schoolboys convinced a visiting magician can make their problems vanish, which won Best Feature Film in Gujarati at the 65th National Film Awards and cast Naseeruddin Shah. Prahlad Gopakumar shot it and Niraj Voralia cut it. On his next feature Saini took the editing bench himself.
Shubh Yatra released on 28 April 2023, produced in part by Nayanthara and Vignesh Shivan, shot by Swathy Deepak, with Saini credited as its editor. He followed with Jai Mata Ji, Let's Rock in 2025 through Amdavad Films. A National Award winning director choosing to cut his own comedy is a small fact that says something larger: in an industry where post-production budgets are thin, control of the timeline is the cheapest form of authorship available.
Photo: Manish panwar saini, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, via Wikimedia Commons.
Design, costume and sound
The departments Gujarati film journalism almost never names, and the six people who can be verified in them.
8Niki Joshi
Joshi is the only Gujarati craft name in the last forty years to win a National Award in a design category. She took Best Costume Design at the 70th National Film Awards for Kutch Express, announced on 16 August 2024, one of three prizes the film collected alongside Best Feature Film Promoting National, Social and Environmental Values and Best Actress for Manasi Parekh. Her work on the film required going into the traditional dress of the Kutch region and building something that reads as culturally accurate on screen rather than as costume.
She had already dressed Hellaro, where thirteen actresses share the screen in a 1975 village setting and every garment has to differentiate a character without breaking the period. Her profile lists her plainly as a costume designer and stylist working between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, with the National Award year in the bio. Two of the most decorated Gujarati films of the modern era went out in her clothes.
Instagram: @styleitwithniki (verified 2026-07-29).
9Sheel Thakore
Thakore designed the two Gujarati films that have won the most national recognition this decade. On Hellaro he was one of two production designers with Ravi Popat, building a 1975 Kutch village that had to hold a period, a caste geography and a group of women whose only freedom is a walk to a distant waterbody. On Kutch Express he is credited as both production designer and art director, which in a Gujarati budget usually means one person doing two departments' work.
Production design is the craft that Gujarati cinema most consistently fails to credit in public. There is exactly one National Award for production design in the language's entire history, and it was won in 1980. Thakore's run across Hellaro and Kutch Express is the strongest modern body of work in the discipline, and almost none of it has been written about anywhere.
Instagram: @sheelthakore (verified 2026-07-29).
10Bhavya Buch
Buch art-directed Jhamkudi, Umang Vyas's 153 minute horror comedy that released on 31 May 2024 for Soul Sutra and RD Brothers and reportedly netted around Rs 3.35 crore in its first four days. Horror comedy is the hardest brief an art department gets. The same haveli has to read as ridiculous in the afternoon and genuinely wrong at night, and there is no budget to build it twice.
The profile describes the work as art direction and links to a professional database entry, alongside a paper-carving practice and a design studio. That mix, film art direction sitting next to interior design and craft work, is exactly how the Gujarati art department survives between features. Nobody in this discipline in this industry lives on film work alone.
Instagram: @bataata_vada (verified 2026-07-29).
11Chirayu Bodas
Bodas is the production designer on Chatni, the Saandeep Patel family drama starring Malhar Thakar and Puja Joshi that Eforu Entertainment and Buddhipriyay Pictures are releasing on 18 September 2026, with Tapan Vyas on camera. His credit sits inside the film's own published crew list, which is currently the only reliable place Gujarati design credits appear at all.
He is an architect by training and runs a design practice alongside the film work. That background is worth noting because Gujarati production design is increasingly being handled by people whose primary discipline is space rather than cinema, which is a quiet change in how these films are being built. The old model was a carpenter and a set dresser. The new one is somebody who can draw a plan.
Instagram: @chirayubodas (verified 2026-07-29).
12Gauri Dighe
Dighe designed the costumes for Shubhchintak, the Nisarg Vaidya thriller released on 30 May 2025 by Soul Sutra Studios and RD Brothers, with Manasi Parekh and Swwapnil Joshi leading and Dhawalika Singh shooting. Her credit appears in the film's own crew block, which is the only public record of it.
Her profile describes the practice as costume styling and design inspired by culture, comfort and craft, and links to a showreel. That phrasing matters more than it reads. Gujarati commercial cinema has a persistent costume problem, where contemporary characters get dressed like a catalogue and period characters get dressed like a folk dance troupe. The designers pulling the work back towards actual regional dress are the ones changing how these films look, and almost none of them are named in reviews.
Instagram: @gauridighe (verified 2026-07-29).
13Yash Darji
Darji designed the sound for Kutch Express, which took three National Awards at the 70th ceremony, and again for Shubhchintak in 2025. He carries the MPSE post-nominal from the Motion Picture Sound Editors, took a recording engineering qualification at Full Sail University in Florida, and holds an earlier software engineering degree from Gujarat University. That is an unusual route into a Gujarati crew list and it shows in the work.
Sound is the department this industry underfunds most reliably. A Gujarati film will spend on a song and then post-sync its dialogue in a rush, which is why so many of them sound flat next to their own images. Kutch Express does not, and a named sound designer with international training is the reason. He is the only sound person on this page, and that is not because the industry only has one. It is because the rest are not written down anywhere a researcher can find them.
Instagram: @yashdarji (verified 2026-07-29).
What the numbers say
Verifiable Gujarati craft names, by department
This chart measures the documentation, not the industry. Roughly eighty Gujarati films release each year and every one of them has a sound department, so the single verifiable sound name here is a measure of how badly these credits are recorded, not of how many people do the work.
Questions people actually ask
Who edited Hellaro?
Prateek Gupta edited Hellaro. He also co-wrote its screenplay with Abhishek Shah and Saumya Joshi, worked as associate director and was one of its co-producers. He had already won a National Award at the 62nd ceremony for directing the documentary Goonga Pehelwan.
Who won the National Award for costume design for Kutch Express?
Niki Joshi won Best Costume Design at the 70th National Film Awards for Kutch Express, announced on 16 August 2024. It was one of three prizes the film took, alongside Best Feature Film Promoting National, Social and Environmental Values and Best Actress for Manasi Parekh. She had earlier designed the costumes for Hellaro.
Has a Gujarati film ever won the National Award for production design?
Once. Meera Lakhia won Best Art Direction, now called Best Production Design, at the 28th National Film Awards for Ketan Mehta's Bhavni Bhavai. No Gujarati film has won in that category since. She has no photograph on Wikimedia Commons and no traceable public record, which is why she is credited in the text of this page rather than listed as an entry.
Do Gujarati directors edit their own films?
Several do. Vijaygiri Bava is credited as director, co-writer, producer and co-editor on Kasoombo and as director, co-writer and co-editor on 21mu Tiffin. Manish Saini edited Shubh Yatra himself. Rahul Bhole and Vinit Kanojia are credited as the editors of their own film Reva. Thin post-production budgets are the main reason.
Why is it so hard to find Gujarati film crew credits?
Film infoboxes and databases carry cinematography and editing fairly reliably, but production design, costume and sound are recorded inconsistently and often not at all. For several people on this page the only public record of the credit is the crew block a production house posted when the film was announced. That is why a verified list of thirteen is more useful than a padded list of twenty five.
Sources and image credits
All photographs are free-licensed files from Wikimedia Commons, reused with the attribution each licence requires. No press agency or studio photographs are hosted on this site. Instagram content is linked or embedded from the official account, never re-hosted.
- National Film Award for Best Production Design and National Film Award for Best Costume Design winner tables, English Wikipedia, retrieved July 2026
- English Wikipedia film articles and infoboxes for Hellaro, Kutch Express, Kasoombo, Umbarro, Bhavni Bhavai, Dhh, Shubh Yatra, 21mu Tiffin, Jhamkudi, Chhello Divas and Bey Yaar, retrieved July 2026
- Moviebuff crew records for Hellaro, Kutch Express, Kasoombo, Umbarro, Jhamkudi, Bey Yaar, Wrong Side Raju and Chaal Jeevi Laiye, retrieved July 2026
- English Wikipedia biography of Apurva Motiwale, retrieved July 2026
- Official film credit posts published by production houses and heads of department for Dhabkaaro, Shubhchintak, Kutch Express and Chatni
- Instagram profiles scraped and verified on 29 July 2026